| 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 |
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60% |
[ 32 ] |
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| Total Votes : 53 |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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 Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 13:24 |
 
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Fair enough, thanks for clarification. Personally, I like to play Season 2+ team because they are a bit more developed (with 1-2 players kept from the previous Season, not too many otherwise I consider the team potentially gamebreaking) and different. IDT is something I play passively (I mean, without deliberately joining it, the teams are automatically included in that ladder).
I find the IDT a nice extra metagoal while I play my Season 2+ teams, but the main reason I play Season 2+ it's because I like that dimension. |
Last edited by MattDakka on Sep 08, 2026; edited 1 time in total |
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JanMattys
Joined: Feb 29, 2004
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 13:25 |
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| MattDakka wrote: | It's just the rational suggestion to do, not just what I want. It's what I want AND the logical, rational thing too.
The way I play it's fair, logical, rational. I don't pick noobs on purpose getting CR points for it in a ranked division and/or to build my teams in an easy way to have an advantage by picking noobs, then joining the Box and/or Majors.
Everybody should do the same. |
You are delusional. Time and time again, people who know the game far better than me have pointed out that random matchmaking is far from being immune to gaming.
You may remove opponent selection, but you do not remove optimization around the scheduler. Race choice can be influenced by what performs best in the current Box environment, and player development can be tailored to exploit the way teams are matched: what TV to sit at, which skills are worth their cost, which players to keep or fire, how much bench to carry, how (and if) to redraft, and so on.
That is still a form of picking. You are just moving the selection from “which opponent do I accept?” to “which team do I build, and how do I build it, to maximize my chances against the matchmaking system?”
So saying that your way is inherently “fair, logical and rational” while other approaches are not is precisely the problem. Every competitive environment creates incentives that can be gamed. Box does not magically remove them; it changes them.
“Everybody should do the same” is not a logical conclusion. It is simply your preferred way of playing elevated into a universal rule, because you seem to believe that your high CR is only truly meaningful according to your own set of values, and you can only preserve your position as the supreme champion by narrowing the definition of what counts as legitimate competitive play until nobody can question your skill anymore.
And if pursuing that vision means leaving casualties along the way — pushing out people who do not share your preferred way of playing or your definition of skill — then so be it. Nothing seems to matter more than reshaping the environment around your own preferences: not the community, not other people's enjoyment of the game, and not their perfectly legitimate expectation that they should be able to play and enjoy the game in a different way from you.
What makes this even more self-defeating is that many of the problems you keep running into with matchmaking, seasons, and the Competitive division in general are made worse by the lack of players in C. Yet you are contributing to that very problem by relentlessly pushing the idea that there is one legitimate way to play, while relegating every other expectation to somewhere outside the boundaries of “the Blood Bowl that really matters.”
That is a value judgement, not an objective or rational truth. And it automatically devalues the way everyone who does not accept your premises chooses to play the game. Some of those people will simply leave. When they leave, the population problem gets worse. When the population gets worse, matchmaking gets worse, seasons become harder to balance, and the whole system becomes less capable of delivering the environment you want. Then you complain again that the system does not work as well as it could and propose another restriction to make it conform even more closely to your preferred model.
It becomes a vicious circle: narrow the definition of legitimate play, alienate some of the people who fall outside it, reduce the player pool, suffer the consequences of a smaller player pool, and then demand that the rules be narrowed further to compensate for those consequences.
Nobody is questioning your ability as a player. But the apparent need to keep changing the rules of the environment so that you can be both its champion and the gatekeeper of what counts as legitimate competition is beyond arrogant. Being exceptionally good at one way of playing Blood Bowl does not give you ownership over the definition of what Blood Bowl (much less competitive Blood Bowl) should be for everybody else. |
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Last edited by JanMattys on Sep 08, 2026; edited 1 time in total |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 13:26 |
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| JanMattys wrote: | | MattDakka wrote: |
About the numbers of people playing in the Box:
If Black Box were the only way to play games, more people would play there
....
GF could still be used for any unranked game, but for any match related to CR, tournaments, Trophies etc. only the Box should be allowed. |
This is why arguing with you is a waste of everyone's time. Once in a while you let your tongue slip and you reveal your true intent, which is "everybody needs to play the way I want or else".
Dude. |
All but the newest of forum denizens can fairly accurately guess Matt's opinion on most Black Box topics without the bother of asking him.  |
_________________
Official + Secret League rosters, old style skill progression, NO re-draft OR full 2016 rules. OR... 4000TV All Star Bowl - ALWAYS recruiting! |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 13:49 |
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| JanMattys wrote: |
You are delusional. Time and time again, people who know the game far better than me have pointed out that random matchmaking is far from being immune to gaming. |
GF can be gamed way more easily than random MM. Fact.
I challenge you to find a pure Box coach only with 87% win rate with at least 100 Box only games played. Find them if you can.
| JanMattys wrote: |
You may remove opponent selection, but you do not remove optimization around the scheduler. Race choice can be influenced by what performs best in the current Box environment, and player development can be tailored to exploit the way teams are matched: what TV to sit at, which skills are worth their cost, which players to keep or fire, how much bench to carry, how (and if) to redraft, and so on.
That is still a form of picking. |
You can pick on GF without bothering to play the best teams, the TV etc. just find a noob, you could even win with Goblins vs a noob, without even needing a top tier 1 team. Consider that. Also, even assuming that in the Box you optimize the teams, you can't pick the next opponent.
Your next Box opponent might be a guy with the same race you are playing, with the same optimization, but better than you. On GF, if you want, you never face a coach better than you and on GF you can still optimize your team as well. Box is less exploitable than GF.
| JanMattys wrote: | | You are just moving the selection from “which opponent do I accept?” to “which team do I build, and how do I build it, to maximize my chances against the matchmaking system?” |
You try to maximize the chances with efficient rosters but you can't maximize the odds to face a weaker-than-you coach.
| JanMattys wrote: | | Every competitive environment creates incentives that can be gamed. Box does not magically remove them; it changes them. |
Box at least removes the picking factor at all. On GF you can game your team and the opponents it faces. And that can be easily proved by 87% win rate of a GF coach and that the team I faced with 5 stat boosted players was from the GF.
These are facts, not my opinions.
| JanMattys wrote: | | It is simply your preferred way of playing elevated into a universal rule |
If we want to have a fair CR ladder, we should aim to make all people playing there on an as much as possible even ground, if we want to assess their coach's skill and win rate. If some people are ranked by picking and others are rated by not picking, the system is flawed.
People should play in the same environment, because it's fairer (not perfect, but fairer).
Would you play a final game in a private league vs a team which played all its games by choosing its opponents while you couldn't? Would it be a fair private league?
Would people complain about it or not?
| JanMattys wrote: |
because you seem to believe that your high CR is only truly meaningful according to your own set of values, and you can only preserve your position as the supreme champion by narrowing the definition of what counts as legitimate competitive play until nobody can question your skill anymore. |
For me, as I said, we can delete CR today. Either we delete it, fine, or, if we keep it, it must be meaningful.
Not just to rank me, but to rank in a fair way everybody else. Moreover, I said that I can ignore the CR aspect, but I don't want to waste an hour locked into a game vs a team with 5 stat boosted players farmed through GF games, while my team didn't do the same.
| JanMattys wrote: | | Nothing seems to matter more than reshaping the environment around your own preferences: not the community, not other people's enjoyment of the game, and not their perfectly legitimate expectation that they should be able to play and enjoy the game in a different way from you. |
People would be free to play and develop their teams on GF, just they should leave the Box alone.
Either you care about farming, developing a team through picking or because you want to tell a story, with a team having a theme, or you want to compete. If you want to compete, you should do it with blind MM.
| JanMattys wrote: |
What makes this even more self-defeating is that many of the problems you keep running into with matchmaking, seasons, and the Competitive division in general are made worse by the lack of players in C. |
The lack of players screams for having just a division.
Since the Box is clearly better (or less worse), it should be the only division to play MM.
GF would still be there, but without rankings involved (or, if we want to delete CR too, fine, just don't allow GF teams to disturb pure Box teams with their unnaturally farmed teams). Either you farm your team in the Box, fine for me, or you don't activate in the Box at all. It's very simple.
| JanMattys wrote: |
When the population gets worse, matchmaking gets worse, seasons become harder to balance |
1) Seasons are already unbalanced, they should be shorter;
2) MM doesn't even need Seasons to work properly. It needs a hard TV cap set, I guess, at 1500 TV (it should be tested). Cap the stat boosts at +1 per characteristic. These two changes alone would remove the need to have the Season Re-Draft.
| JanMattys wrote: |
Nobody is questioning your ability as a player. But the apparent need to keep changing the rules of the environment so that you can be both its champion and the gatekeeper of what counts as legitimate competition is beyond arrogant. |
I talk with other people and I'm not the only one who gets pissed off by facing unnaturally developed GF teams.
I'm the one telling it on the forums. Even if you don't care about winning, many people do care about not wasting 1 hour. If they face with a 1200 TV team a 1800 super developed GF team their game experience, as you can imagine, is not very nice. I'm trying to fight this issue, not to find a way to fuel my arrogance by shaping the system. I can exploit too, if I want. I could start picking on GF, but it's not what I like to do. I can just play 1TTD teams. Since I understand this is not great, I'm trying to suggest an option affecting only the people interested in not facing super developed teams.
Always talking about me as person, as I were the only guy playing in the Box and the only one facing super developed teams.
You should try to see the whole picture, not just MattDakka, the CR obsessed crazy coach who wants the things done his way.
Maybe more people would play if Season 2+ teams were less developed, with shorter Season, or if they were sure not to face a team with 5 stat boosted players popping up from the GF. |
Last edited by MattDakka on Sep 08, 2026; edited 5 times in total |
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JanMattys
Joined: Feb 29, 2004
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 14:09 |
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Matt, I’ll try to address you person to person one last time, and then I’ll leave this conversation for good, because frankly, hearing the same arguments repeated over and over doesn’t make them any more convincing than they were the first time.
| MattDakka wrote: | | For me, as I said, we can delete CR today. Either we delete it, fine, or, if we keep it, it must be meaningful.” |
Why does it have to be so black and white? An either-or approach is rarely the best way to deal with a problem. Most problems are better dealt with through compromise, and you seem fundamentally unwilling to accept one here.
We can keep CR as it is and absolutely nothing will explode. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that I’m a picker. I’m not, but let’s pretend I am. Does my having a high CR somehow detract from the value of your CR, or my having a pimped up team detract from your gaming experience in the long run, except for a super-tiny number of occurrences? I'd say no. Yet you’re making a mountain out of this.
When I used to play Ranked regularly, plenty of people reached high CRs (or high TVs) by picking. Everyone knew who they were. They got laughed at, nobody took their ratings particularly seriously, and believe me, **everyone** knew which coaches had genuinely earned their high CR and which ones had got there by picking.
I also knew perfectly well that my honest-to-God 170 CR was worth more than some picker’s 180, and a lot less than some who had legit 180.
So why does it bother you so much to share the CR ladder with “unworthy” opponents? You know whether your CR is legitimate, and so does everyone who actually cares about it. Why do you feel the need to reshape the entire system just to drive those people out of the temple? It seems utterly pointless to me.
| MattDakka wrote: | | The lack of players screams for having just one division. Since the Box is clearly better (or less bad), it should be the only division in which to play MM. |
“Better” is a very poor choice of word here. Better implies an objective value judgment. The Box is better **for what you want from the game**, but you keep presenting “better” as though it were some kind of universal truth.
For the nth time: it simply isn’t.
| MattDakka wrote: | | If we want to have a fair CR ladder, we should aim to have everyone playing there on as even a footing as possible if we want to assess their coaching skill and win rate. If some people are ranked by picking and others are rated without picking, the system is flawed. |
So what?
**Every** system is going to be flawed, and I strongly believe you know that just as well as I do.
You sound so focused on solving the problem immediately in front of you that you’re overlooking the bigger issue: you will never actually reach the perfectly fair system you’re looking for. There will always be another imperfection to fix, another imbalance to correct, another loophole to close. Six months from now, you’ll inevitably find something else that needs fixing.
At some point, it is better to accept that we play in a reasonably decent, if imperfect, environment and simply live with some of those imperfections. Trying to fix everything is a battle against windmills.
See you in five years or so. |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 14:32 |
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| JanMattys wrote: |
Does my having a high CR somehow detract from the value of your CR |
If you were higher ranked than me yes, it would detract from the value of my CR. You would be ranked higher than without deserving it as much as me. If CR and rankings are supposed to evalue coaches they must be as fair as possible.
The same goes for win rate. If you had a higher win rate than mine it would be again unfair.
| JanMattys wrote: |
or my having a pimped up team detract from your gaming experience in the long run, except for a super-tiny number of occurrences? I'd say no. Yet you’re making a mountain out of this. |
If you have a pimped up team developed through picking you are using vs me an advantage you got more easily than me.
Again, it's unfair. I play blind MM for a reason, being matched without getting easy advantage or facing easy advantage.
| JanMattys wrote: | | When I used to play Ranked regularly, plenty of people reached high CRs by picking. Everyone knew who they were. They got laughed at, nobody took their ratings particularly seriously, and believe me, **everyone** knew which coaches had genuinely earned their high CR and which ones had got there by picking. |
Yes, but when Ranked and Box were split, I didn't have to face those ridiculously farmed teams in the Box. I could have faced them in the Majors, but the Majors are tournaments you decide to join, not the one-off games you play on a daily basis.
| JanMattys wrote: | | So why does it bother you so much to share the CR ladder with “unworthy” opponents? |
Because a CR ladder is supposed to assess people accurately, not just to list people without a solid performance criterion. If I'm under a guy with higher CR/win rate than me but they played 100% or most of their games on GF it's not correct. Real sports' rankings don't work like that. Tennis players don't pick their opponents to gain their ladder points, they face whom they have to face.
| JanMattys wrote: | | You know whether your CR is legitimate, and so does everyone who actually cares about it. |
I know, but a system should not require to know who exploited or didn't exploit it. A good ranking system gives, at a glance, accurate informations about coaches.
A good ranking system should immediately tell to a new-to-the-site guy who are the really good coaches. You should not have to play for a while on the site, figure who the pickers are, them "filter them out visually" of the ladder by yourself. They should be filtered by the ranking system itself.
| JanMattys wrote: | | Why do you feel the need to reshape the entire system just to drive those people out of the temple? It seems utterly pointless to me. |
Asking for an option not fo face GF teams or to face teams who played a mix of GF and Box games is not meant to drive anybody out of the temple. It's just supposed to avoid to face the GF farmed teams which are not fair opponents in a blind MM system.
| JanMattys wrote: |
“Better” is a very poor choice of word here. Better implies an objective value judgment. The Box is better **for what you want from the game**, but you keep presenting “better” as though it were some kind of universal truth. |
Again, I repeat, Box is not perfect, but I have never seen a Box coach with 87% win rate. If this is too hard to understand I can't explain it better.
If a coach has 87% on GF while in the Box this is not possible, it doesn't take a genius to understand that in the Box such kind of picking is not possible. It's a fact.
For sure Box could be improved but, between the two choices, GF and Box, the latter is the fairer system.
| JanMattys wrote: |
**Every** system is going to be flawed, and I strongly believe you know that just as well as I do. |
Sure, but we should start from the less flawed system, then work on it to improve it and make it less flawed.
Between GF and Box, GF is the more flawed system.
Let's use Box and let's see what is flawed of it, then let's try to fix it.
| JanMattys wrote: | | you will never actually reach the perfectly fair system you’re looking for. |
I never thought to achieve perfection, but to have a less flawed system. Less imperfection is better than more imperfection. This is how progress works.
| JanMattys wrote: |
At some point, it is better to accept that we play in a reasonably decent, if imperfect, environment and simply live with some of those imperfections. Trying to fix everything is a battle against windmills. |
I didn't say to fix everything. I asked for a tick option affecting people interested in it, not to change the whole site! Or just having a shorter Season, I don't think this is unreasonable. If it's not possible due to reasons, ok, but I wanted to try. As I said, I can adapt by exploiting myself, but not everybody can or wants to do it.
If, after reporting the issue of 5 stat boosted GF teams, nothing gets done in order to prevent it, I won't feel guilty when I will play only natural one turner teams. |
Last edited by MattDakka on Sep 08, 2026; edited 7 times in total |
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CrisisChris
Joined: Dec 11, 2023
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 14:36 |
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| koadah wrote: | No. I don't think that you are reading the numbers correctly. The black box does slightly more games than open Competitive.
I don't know where the numbers are for S2+ only.
We're only really talking about S2+ Box here. S1 seems fine. |
You are right. I am sorry. I messed up the colors for Competitive and Total... Do not ask why that is. Eyes and age and colors and all that...
I thiss think that for Season 2+ the number of GF games is a multitude of the S2+ blackbox games... Knowing that almost every of those s2+ box games involves Matt.  |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 15:16 |
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Yeah, about growing the site... part of it means not scaring the newbies off lol. |
_________________
Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor. |
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JanMattys
Joined: Feb 29, 2004
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 15:22 |
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| MattDakka wrote: | | If it's not possible due to reasons, ok, but I wanted to try. As I said, I can adapt by exploiting myself, but not everybody can or wants to do it. |
We've already had this conversation multiple times, so I won't insist. I'll just leave this here: if, instead of saying "this thing sucks, but I have to do it anyway to protect myself from the evil others who do it," you actually tried to lead by example and refrained from doing the very thing you criticize, that would go a long way toward earning the respect you so evidently long for.
It's easy to condemn a behavior while justifying your own participation in it as self-defense. Leading by example means accepting that you might put yourself at a disadvantage and choosing not to do it anyway. That's what gives the criticism most of its weight. |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 15:25 |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 15:26 |
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JanMattys
Joined: Feb 29, 2004
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 15:27 |
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| koadah wrote: |
When are the Hellfishes coming back? |
I couldn't move them from R to C sadly. That broke my heart. |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 15:54 |
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JackassRampant
Joined: Feb 26, 2011
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 16:07 |
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If we got something going in Box for s2, we could handle s2+ by age, and S1 by TV. That would reduce redraft-hunting, because teams are pretty vulnerable right after a redraft. For now, it would either not matter or just make for fewer games (albeit fewer bad games), but if we set it up well, and then create a good campaign for second-season Box teams, this could kickstart a new way to play.
What about a metagroup that scores teams based on what they didn't redraft? Play all 15 games, and a tourney if you like, then when you redraft, your score for the season is the skill value plus agent fees of the three most expensive players you don't keep, in 10k increments, plus twice your net wins (2W+T). |
_________________
Lude enixe, obliviscatur timor.
Last edited by JackassRampant on Sep 08, 2026; edited 1 time in total |
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CrisisChris
Joined: Dec 11, 2023
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| Posted:
Sep 08, 2026 - 16:09 |
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| JackassRampant wrote: | | Yeah, about growing the site... part of it means not scaring the newbies off lol. |
I feel you are talking to me here. And you are right I played some GF games in the last two weeks and some of them against new coaches as well.
And yes I feel bad about something like this afterwards... and it made me create a BBT squad.
Feel free to talk to me directly if it was ment for me.
Cheers and love |
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