| Poll |
| ideas for Box MM |
| tick option to pair pure Box teams with pure Box teams |
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37% |
[ 20 ] |
| GF teams can't get back to GF once they played a Box match, all their future matches will have to be played in the Box |
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1% |
[ 1 ] |
| 1 GF match allowed per 2 Box matches played by a team |
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0% |
[ 0 ] |
| pie |
|
60% |
[ 32 ] |
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| Total Votes : 53 |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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 Posted:
Sep 05, 2026 - 08:57 |
 
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I would be down with that, or even better just hiding overall CR, if there was a variety of stuff like BBT, including something with a future for the teams. Metagroups with CR impact, like an E.L.F.-style group that averages your earned CR across roster bands?
Implemented poorly, this could make picking worse. Coaches might just measure win rates: out of the frying pan, into the fire. Maybe a lot more minor tournament focus might head that off? Especially Swiss tournaments or 4-team robins or whatever, where everyone knows how many games they're gonna get.* There could also be a "Hardcore CR" option under standings that only tracks your hardcore teams, in addition to Overall, C, and B stats.
Playing weak coaches doesn't help your CR, FWIW. Occasionally they beat you, or just tie you, and you get very little for winning, so you slowly creep up, then drop a bit, then creep back up... it just makes a stable ceiling and a wacky floor for you, while it ratchets them up toward a compromise position. It helps your w%. But it also dulls you unless you mix some good coaches in; otherwise, it makes you worse against good coaches.
The way to game CR is to play top rosters or really good teams against lesser teams, preferably favorable roster matchups against good coaches. Also, it helps to take a little break (not long enough for CR decay, but enough to goose your 'RD) then get really picky on matchup (roster @ TV/inducements) grounds against highly-rated coaches, but not so high you don't think you can win. That's kinda in the weeds, but totally manageable if you're patient.
I can't speak about farming in this edition. This is the first team I've felt that I've really farmed to ridonkulousness, and that's mostly because the +ST landed exactly where I wanted them at just about the right times in all cases. (Yes, I didn't always hit, but oh no my B'uns are ST5 Blodge instead of ST6 Block, whatever will I do?) Hard to rely on 7% or whatever to land what I did.
* Ooh, what if we had both brawls and age-driven smacks? Like, low, medium, and high Brawls, and young, middle, and old Smacks. That'd be a suggestion in any case, but if we were to hide overall CR, we'd want to make them Swiss or round robin. |
_________________
Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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JanMattys
Joined: Feb 29, 2004
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| Posted:
Sep 05, 2026 - 10:19 |
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I am so glad I went into self-imposed silenced mode  |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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| Posted:
Sep 05, 2026 - 11:25 |
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To get rid of picking (even just as a suspicion), people must play only in the Box.
In the Box would you find still noobs? Ok, but maybe the very first game would be vs a noob vs a team less squishy than Goblins. Maybe it would be vs a noob with Orcs. The outcome would be the same (i.e. the better coach should still win), but the SPPs gained would be fewer than those gained by played vs Goblins, on average.
An Orc team gaining 21 SPPs on game 1 gets a starting advantage that it's going to snowball, especially by playing vs other noobs next games.
The advantage gained by picking games on GF is easier and quicker development. A GF team develops faster than a Box team, assuming the same coach's skill (and, with Brawlin' Brutes, very fast, to the point that Season 2 GF teams can sport 3 or even 5 stat boosted players! I remember that Season Re-Draft was supposed to allow to keep 1-2 good players, instead).
Then, if the GF team, once it has got that super development, activated in the Box, it could be matched with a pure Box team like mine and have an advantage (the GF team has more stat boosted players and skills relatively to the games played, I don't have yet the counter-skills, freaks etc. to deal with them).
Gained before the Re-Draft forces to trim the players.
If I gain on average 10 SPPs on my Orc team and I face an opponent Orc team which gained 15 SPPs on average, even assuming that the match-up happens at the same numbers of games played by both teams, the GF team will have an advantage. Not due to coach's skill (or not only), but just because it played most/many games vs weaker opponents.
About "after first Season Box is dead": well, maybe it's dead because people don't want to risk to face super farmed teams (GF teams or even pure Box teams with 1-2 developed players).
Maybe, if Season 2+ teams were more trimmed (with shorter Season and less budget) more people would play in the Box with Season 2+ teams.
Anyway, if games are played even in NA time zone, that means that people play in that time zone, they just don't do it in the Box.
If everybody of those NA time zone people played in the Box finding a game should not be a problem.
It's not even a matter of CR points. For me we could remove CR points right now, but if I faced a monster team farmed mostly on GF I would still be pissed off.
Even if no CR points are involved, I value my time and my game experience: a match vs a GF monster team is a waste of it, if I wanted to do it I wouldn't waste time looking for a game in the Box, I would go on GF and accept a game vs a monster team there.
I could understand an objection if I did the same, i.e. playing both on GF and in Box and refusing to play vs teams doing the same but, since I play only in the Box, I don't want to be matched with hybrid GF/Box teams or, if I have to be matched, those hybrid teams must be less developed.
If I have to play at a disadvantage a game, my opponent must have earned their advantage by playing 100% of their games in the Box.
Or, if this is not possible, I even suggested that, in order to activate a GF team in the Box, it must be re-drafted first or wait for the normal Season's end, re-draft, then be activated in the Box.
This sounds as a decent compromise. That said, with 15-game Season, Season 2 doesn't trim enough the stat boosted players, as I have experienced. Even with the Re-Draft as a requirement to activate a GF team in the Box, the Season should be shorter than 15 games or at least the budget should be less.
As an aside, I don't think that regular GF pickers do that to farm CR points, because you don't gain many CR points by picking noobs and you risk to lose many even if you just tie the game.
I think that the regular GF pickers just want to get easy wins and play easy games on which they have total control. An effortless pastime.
About BBT: it would be better if it involved only Box teams, as the name itself says.
Black Box Trophy should mean that: a Trophy played by Box-only teams, not by "teams activated in the Box".
Otherwise, if activating both in the Box and GF doesn't make a difference for purpose of competition's fairness, let's allow the BBT teams to pick on GF as well. |
Last edited by MattDakka on Sep 05, 2026; edited 1 time in total |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
Sep 05, 2026 - 12:38 |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
Sep 05, 2026 - 17:48 |
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We're all trying to squeeze as much out of this as we can get. We don't all want the same thing. There's not that much of it going around. It's kinda just like that. None of us are having our best experience, and the only way that changes is sustained site growth. Getting people who are on another page onto your page is harder than bringing in more people and getting some of them onto your page.
Maybe what we should be doing is encouraging more open play (however it happens) from league-only coaches, getting our local coaches onto FUMBBL, and encouraging more local BB to build that pool, and not trying to tell each other to have their fun in our way. Then we could talk about doing the kinds of things some folks want. |
_________________
Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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JuggerGonzo
Joined: Dec 23, 2014
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2026 - 03:22 |
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Im for pure Black Box teams only. |
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Lorebass
Joined: Jun 25, 2010
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| JanMattys wrote: | | I am so glad I went into self-imposed silenced mode |
More folks need to do this IMO. |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2026 - 10:11 |
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JanMattys
Joined: Feb 29, 2004
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2026 - 12:22 |
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| koadah wrote: | | Then there would be no community aspect of Fumbbl |
You are absolutely right, my friend.
The thing is, whenever I read something, I feel the urge to reply. And when I do, I usually get triggered by other people’s stubbornness—or by my own stubbornness, take your pick.
So, in order to avoid getting triggered too often, I decided against having an active forum life. I have to say it was the healthy choice, even though I still love the community to bits. Let’s just say that a certain type of person drove me away and leave it at that. Whether that’s good or bad for the community as a whole isn’t for me to decide.
Ideally, I’d learn to be less stubborn myself and have to deal with fewer stubborn posters. But neither of those things is likely to happen, so...  |
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ph0enyx13
Joined: Nov 14, 2015
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2026 - 21:03 |
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| MattDakka wrote: |
Why those people can't play only in the Box, then?
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There are fewer people on during North American times so there are fewer people spinning in box and you're more likely to get a match vs someone with super high CR and that's never ever fun. Like I avoid spinning if it looks like there's only one person so I don't get stuck in an hour long unfun game. I signed up for 2 leagues that run at NA hours and have promotion/relegation divisions instead because those do a better job at avoiding matches with a large CR gap. |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2026 - 21:26 |
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| ph0enyx13 wrote: | | Like I avoid spinning if it looks like there's only one person so I don't get stuck in an hour long unfun game. |
I see, and I don't want to get stuck in an hour long unfun game vs a GF farmed team. You have a way to avoid your unfun game, I want a way to avoid my unfun experience, or at least make it less likely. 
As an aside, I find funny that a game which is a parody of American Football has more people playing it in Euro time zone than in NA time zone. |
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ph0enyx13
Joined: Nov 14, 2015
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2026 - 22:10 |
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I think the games workshop stuff is just more popular in europe or at least blood bowl is. |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2026 - 22:23 |
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BB is a parody of British parochialism as much as it is of American football, and doesn't resonate the same with Americans, because we just see the Briticized football parody and it doesn't come with much context here. That's also a very, uh, not very American kind of humor. |
_________________
Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2026 - 22:25 |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
Sep 06, 2026 - 22:27 |
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I hesitated to get into BB because it was American Football themed, and having gone to an American high school, I thought of that as a game for dummies with no self-respect. But I realized, it's not any stupider than war, or crawling around in catacombs fighting monsters for gold, so hey.
Knowing something about American Football is not all that helpful. A 15-yard completed pass that leads to getting pushed out of bounds 10 yards further downfield is a pretty good outcome in American Football, but here it's a catastrophe. Everyone is eligible unless they have the uncommon No Ball trait, the ball is always live, and if a player gets hurt you just play down menz. |
_________________
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