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Post by Fleck on Feb 13, 2014 12:47:40 GMT -8
So no one besides me thinks that the fact that Larsa (who has a CA of 1, by the way) still managed to hold the best team in the league to five goals while helping his team score three is an interesting result? If I remember correctly, everyone who scored a goal for GW in that game had a SHT of 1 as well. So a goalie with a CA of 1 and a forward lineup of people all with an SHT of 1 nearly tied the number 1 team in the league, and everyone's just mad at me because I played the game in a logical way.
I'm not RPing. I said that when I first suggested we bring up blitz again. I'm not playing the characters according to their personalities or their traits or how I think that character would behave. I'm playing to win the game. I am utterly incapable of understanding why anyone would play any other way.
Loveless and GW withdraw from the tournament. You can sort out the scores any way you think is appropriate. Make each LO/GW game a 500 to 0 loss. I don't care.
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Post by monsoonexe on Feb 13, 2014 13:22:35 GMT -8
It doesn't matter one way or the other to me; that's just what happens when a coach has two teams. It had to happen and I'm glad it happened when it did. I haven't been roll playing much. I'm the coach and I tell my players where I think their talents are most suited. Sorry Fleck, I didn't mean to sound like I was upset with the games being thrown. I was just making comments. I would have done the same thing.
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Post by Fleck on Feb 13, 2014 14:56:40 GMT -8
No, no. It's nothing you did. You just happened to wander into "Fleck versus Bob, Round 436." This is a thing we do, especially concerning blitz and Mallboro.
So let me elaborate on my opinions. I'm pissed, because Bob is tacitly accusing me of cheating. You keep trying to couch your language in "well, to each his own" arguments, but the intention is clear. You use words like "unfair" and "breaks the system." You also made a point of putting "strategy" in quotation marks, which is really passive aggressive.
So then what am I supposed to do? Try to say, "No, I'm not cheating," and explain myself? Well, I did that. And Bob countered that argument, so apparently that's not good enough. So should I just go on with the tournament like nothing happened? I can't, because now that lingering accusation of cheating hangs in the air. What's the point of winning if the person in charge of the games thinks I got there unfairly?
I know you have a hard-on for underdog stories, Bob, but the Guests are fucked fifty different ways. They were not going to win against LO. They were not going to have some miracle comeback and win the tournament. They have shits builds and a shit formation and shit stats. So yes, I brought the rabid dog out behind the shed and shot it between the eyes. Sue me. I'm sorry that Count didn't get an opportunity to do the same, but that's how the game works. We agreed to only allow eight teams in and Count just barely missed that mark.
But I'm not going to change my style because of that. I'm not going to give up an opportunity that I earned because Count didn't get the same chance. And I cannot... CANNOT pretend that I don't know what my other team is doing when I play myself. Should I pretend that I don't know my own lineups too? Should I flip a coin to see if Terra lines up RF or LF? I mean, how much should hold myself back in the name of personifying a bunch of data in a computer program?
I play blitz because I like to mess with the data and figure out ways to win. I won't be accused to cheating just because I try to make the best of a bad situation (because like I said before, playing yourself sucks). I'm still dropping out of the tournament. Congratulations to Mercs and Bears for their wins by default.
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Feb 13, 2014 16:36:59 GMT -8
My stance on the whole thing is this: we agreed to let the seeding determine the matchups. Seeding determined that our teams played each other. Both of my teams have a shot at winning, albeit not a very good one (esp. for NS), but both have a much better shot if they play opposite brackets, loser's and winner's. To further maximize their chances, I gave both sides an equal handicap by placing a striker in the goal. This obviously turned the whole thing into a shootout, but it was very much anyone's game. If it were a single elimination round, yes, I would have "thrown" it, but that's what happens when we say, "Okay, no matter what, seeding determines the match-ups." If by some miracle, NS and TME face each other in the final, I will again try to make both sides have an equal shot at the win. As previously mentioned, that's not cheating, that's strategizing to increase the odds of an acceptable outcome.
In regards to Fleck's game - it is very similar, especially considering Larsa probably has a beastly SHT, which means that the nonexistent CA is offset by GW's ability to get a goal from anywhere on the field... Or does it, because the stat distribution for bonuses only goes to SHT 1/5 of the time? I say yes, because on numerous times when discussing the shot bonuses, this plan/approach was described as the best (or even 'only') way, despite the fact that it was a change that radically altered the way that I had to approach TME, who were based on the previous system and thus couldn't do a thing for a while in the new system because we are only able to change one player/season. To me, the Larsa debate has two sides: it's either fine because that's the way the system is now and the 1/5 chance of being unstoppable in a given stat is worth the sacrifice, or it's "throwing the game" and the system that runs the game is broken, because that is suddenly deemed an illegal or non-viable option. My understanding of all the rule shifts and mechanic changes supports the first side, and so do I. And honestly, the first winner's bracket is the time across the entire league and tournament when the stakes are at their lowest. Yes, losing means you can only lose one more time, but because the stamina system does not discriminate, a team that got sent to the bottom bracket and makes it back to the finals has just as likely a chance of having the players it wants in the pool well-rested as a team in the finals. Think back to last tournament, where TME had to play an extra game or two to get back to the finals, and if they had won (which they nearly did), Loveless would have had to bench their best players for the last round. The great thing about the stamina system is that it can't be so easily broken that one game drastically alters the entirety of the rest of the tournament/etc. It may turn out that NS and TME lose their next games. It's happened before, and again, that's part of the mechanics of the game when the game relies partially on randomness/unpredictability. This is the only part where I deviate from Fleck's side, because I know I enjoy the randomness a bit more than he does, but in siding with you on that aspect of the game, Bob, I am also pointing out that that ensures the game is not broken, and disproving whatever implications anyone might have of the advantage being anything other than nominal.
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Post by Bob on Feb 13, 2014 16:41:34 GMT -8
Well, here's the thing. Yeah, I was bein' a jerk (had a bad day yesterday), but I was just joking around with my first post, but then I got rubbed the wrong way by comments (namely, no disrespect, but Wyvern's comment about "guess who's gonna win"). So in seeing two of four games being thrown, and again, being in a generally pissy mood, I was just stuck wondering why we should even have a first round. It really got me thinking more that maybe our tournaments or maybe even our leagues in general should only allow each player to have one team. We've already fixed the leagues by having round one as selfies, but it didn't fix the tournaments and this tournament specifically allowed for a lot of stacking. The other thing that rubbed me the wrong way was the stats of everything. I've been really enjoying the stats that we've been bringing up about blitzball, but in the tournament stats, there was a note about how we basically had to do analyze from a different perspective (averages) because of the stacked results. So now we have some more stacked stats for the tournament bracket (not really looking at LO or GW since the game was 5-3, but more at the 19-17 from TME and NS). Anyway, point of all of this is that I am just trying to address a concern. I never used the word "cheat" (except when I was joking about the double-buzzer beaters of Hojo, which is just a programming error), I said "unfair" and "breaks the system" because I was (dickishly) bringing up a concern that was highly exaggerated in this tournament of 3/4 selfie matches. My analysis of the situation is that tournaments having selfies is inevitable, so if teams like the Guests and Shades aren't going to seriously compete anyway, then maybe we really should have tournaments with only one team per player. Whichever team has the best record of your personal one or two teams gets to advance to the tournament, but only one. I think we're all generally in agreement that the selfie matches are kinda silly and boring, so why not do away with them in the future? Not sure what a five-player tournament would look like on challonge, but I'd be willing to try it out at least. So please, don't quit the tournament. I'm sorry about my implications--grumpy foruming is akin to drunk foruming. I didn't mean to imply that either of you were cheating, I just had two pairs of games being rubbed in my face as "there's an error to the way this game works" and I grumpily replied accusingly, but I actually just wanted some discussion on how to error-proof the game. If we're all in agreement about selfies being bad, then let's just talk about how to remove them. ...And yes, the Guests not being creamed is very interesting--but you soooo shouldn't think anything of it because the idea of a shooter in goal and a powerful defense is the whole dynamic of the Mercenaries! That's MY dynamic!
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Post by wyvernxk7 on Feb 13, 2014 17:34:04 GMT -8
That also was TME's dynamic before anyone else's, just for the record But my saying "Guess who's gonna win" was meant not as an "f-you" but an "aw, shucks, this situation again," sorta comment. Clearly, no one likes self-matches, but I wasn't like, "Man, Bob's such a dick," or anything. And again, I maintain that I didn't throw the game in the conventional sense, because I think I made that comment before I was certain about my lineups and before I decided that both sides would have equally bizarre arrangements. To add to that, I wouldn't say that NS isn't seriously competing, because even playing the loss for round 1 is a strategic move that allows them to avoid the top-ranked teams for longer. I completely intend for them to have a shot. And last thing, as for self-matches, my solution is this: because they still affect league stamina, the only time for them is in the first round. I think it adds a dynamic of strategy to the league because only one team can win... or do you shoot for a tie? Either way, you have to put your best foot forward if you want the best outcome. That being said, I feel like in tournaments, it should be seeded by conference, where each person with more than one team has an AFC and an NFC team, meaning they could only meet in the rounds where it's truly do-or-die. In those situations, there would be no need to throw the match because either team winning is favorable, so the game could be experimental or a standard, direct game, but it would be a good one either way. That would not only diminish the odds of having self-matches considerably, maintain the tension of the tournament, and allow seeding to still matter (and to a greater extent, potentially), but it would also mean that virtually no games would be thrown, even if they were self-matches.
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Post by Bob on Feb 13, 2014 17:53:44 GMT -8
It's a good dynamic, really.
And yeah, I know it wasn't meant to be that, but it can be taken differently if you're the program designer and game coordinator. I totally get why you and Fleck went for that style and don't fault you for it, but as the guy who came up with the rules that are supposed to ensure fairness across the game, when you see multiple people doing it, joking about it, and then pairing it with the utter chaos that has been my life over the past few months, it can be interpreted instead as "look how broken your stupid program/system is!" That's why I wanted to bring up the concern, but in retrospect, I should've waited until the tournament ended to say anything.
I was thinking about it on my birthday walk (I sure know how to have fun...) and it's kind of like a company printing a terribly typo. Reminds me of when Best Buy forgot a digit on the price of a nice TV that changed the advertised price from something like $600 to $60. Do you blame the people that are coming in and demanding the $60 TV? No, but you work like hell to fix it so that nobody else does. So should you guys throw the match? Yeah, probably. But as the programmer, I don't want this advantage to exist in the future. You're right, it's nominal, but very slight differences in this game can make all the difference sometimes.
I've definitely considered the idea of different conferences. Are you saying we should have one giant league, then two conferences? One for each person's best team and one for their worst? Because I kind of like that idea, really.
But yeah, again, I'm truly sorry for how this all came out. I know my remarks did not come out as intended, but life's been tough for me lately and that can make joking comments sometimes look like "f-yous."
EDIT: P.S. Don't stop joking around. I just took these ones poorly. Bad timing is all.
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Post by Fleck on Feb 13, 2014 18:25:38 GMT -8
.... Okay fine.
*hugs all around.*
Before I go into my discussions about what to do about the selfie games, I just really want to stress the fact that Loveless got NO advantage from my selfie game. I played them the exact same way I would have if I had been up against the Mercs or anyone else. Even though Guests lost, they're the ones who took home the advantage, because they got some desperately needed rest heading into the elimination bracket. And I figured since they were probably already going to lose anyway, GW could stand a bit of a break. I just don't want anyone to say that Loveless has an advantage going through the rest of the tournament because they really do not.
On a somewhat personal note, this topic touches on one of my major hot button issues: that is when people accuse me of cheating or cop out of games. All through school, all my friends were giant assholes who would either A: quit when they were behind B: cheat when they were behind or C: insult me for taking the game "too seriously" when they were behind. And then when they were winning, I got hear all about how many dicks I could suck and yadda, yadda, yadda. Basically, they gave me one of my many neuroses.
And so now whenever I even get a hint of "cheating" or anything like that, I go from zero to blind rage instantly. So I was having a pretty nice day and looking forward to more Blitz Tourney action, and then Bob rubbed his wiener all over my hot button and I exploded (I will not rewrite that sentence). In better news, I kicked ass in my workout today, because nothing inspires me to go lift weights like blind rage.
Anyway, my thoughts on the conference system. While I really do want to do away with selfie games in the tournament (and maybe altogether) the problem with the conference system is that we'd always be playing the same people. For example, it would be maybe Loveless, Bears, Shades, and SM7. Only those four would ever play each other. And on the other half, those four would only ever play each other. The tournament brackets would be very samey. And then, with a conference system, we run the risk of having a tournament that ENDS with a selfie. Super-ultra-mega lame. At least with the current system, you're more likely to face yourself early than at the end.
I was actually thinking about this before and I was wondering if we could do the tournaments like the Olympics. You know, have a "Group" phase followed by an Elimination bracket. With 9 people (assuming Rich wants to suffer with us another season), we could do it like this:
Group A: #1 League Finisher #2 League Finisher #3 League Finisher
Group B: #4 League Finisher #5 League Finisher #6 League Finisher
Group C: #7 League Finisher #8 League Finisher #9 League Finisher
Then we play Round Robin in each group. Obviously, we can tweak how the Groups are seeded. This is just for example.
Elimination Bracket:
Seed 1: Winner of Group A Seed 2: Winner of Group B Seed 3: Winner of Group C Seed 4: Best record/highest scoring among non-winners in all groups.
And then just have a four-team single elimination bracket to decide the winner. Doing this would accomplish several things. For one, it would keep everyone in contention longer. As it stands, we have a lot of "downtime" where people are eliminated and can do nothing but stand on the sidelines and wait for the next season. But with the group system, everyone's in contention right up until the third and final group round. And then we only have a brief 4 person bracket. If Bob does a Wednesday and Saturday update, we can finish off the end of the tourney in a week and then go right back to the league. So even if you don't clear out of Group, you only have to wait a week or so before the next league cycle begins.
Also, while I like the double-elimination bracket, there is a lot of downtime during the tourney as well, while we wait for the Elimination Bracket to catch up with the Winner's Bracket. With the Group system, we'd have 3 games every round for 3 rounds, then move down to the elimination bracket. So we'd have more games played constantly, with less dead air.
And with the group system, it changes the strategy of selfie games. If you are unlucky enough to be caught in a group with yourself, there's still that empty fourth slot you have to consider for the best team among non-winners. So if you shoot one team in the knees to advance your other team, then you basically screw yourself out of a chance to get both teams into the elimination round. So it encourages us to play more fairly without us having to do anything too crazy with the brackets or lineups.
Also, we can allow tie games in the Group, so there's just a lot more potential there.
I dunno. I like the idea of a group-then-elimination bracket system. Thoughts?
Edit: Fine, I'll re-enter the Tourney.
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Post by Bob on Feb 13, 2014 18:51:13 GMT -8
Just a note: I did notice that Loveless didn't change their line-up. Still had Vivi in goal and Terra up front (who often replaces Lightning or Genesis). So yeah, I noticed.
And yeah, that group idea sounds pretty awesome to me. Dunno if we'll be able to host that format through challonge, but that doesn't really matter. We do what we want!
Also: It is my birthday and that thing about my weiner exploding on your hot butt(on) or whatever? I want that.
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Post by Fleck on Feb 13, 2014 19:10:12 GMT -8
If we really wanted to do it in Challonge and they didn't have the right format, we could just break it down into pieces and have separate brackets for the Group Phase and then the Elimination Phase. Depending on what Challonge allows, that might be more trouble than it's worth though.
And because it's your birthday, I'll let you slather your exploding wiener all of my hot everything.
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Post by countlieberkuhn on Feb 14, 2014 8:58:54 GMT -8
Jeez, I leave the forum for a day and our little sausage fest gets all PMS-y! At least it's all sorted now, else Solid Snake would have to woo you into submission with his manly charms! For the record - directing this primarily at Fleck's comment about not understanding why you wouldn't play to win - I don't mind never winning. I choose not to play the game in the same way as Fleck or Wyvern because that's how I roll, and I don't feel like this is a game I want to MinMax. I just want to have a little fun with it in my own way. It's not like I intentionally lose, as I try to win each game despite not stacking all the odds in my favour. Besides, Brits in particular love an underdog, so when I do win, it tastes sweeter. So keep on doing what you're doing and min-maxing, because those rare victories against the top-tier teams like Loveless and The Grizzlies make it all worth it I probably sound like one of Fleck's asshole C-category school friends saying that, but fuck it. Winning against the odds feels great! Another thing in my favour is I don't have an A team. Going into each league, I treat SM7 and MAG as having the same chances of victory, despite their past records, and they tend to see-saw in their relative successes between leagues. When they meet, I've typically thrown everything I had into the game for each team, just to see which one comes out on top this time around. I would have liked to see both teams in the tournament, but what can ya do?
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Post by Fleck on Feb 14, 2014 12:52:15 GMT -8
We need a manly Brit around us at all times or else our hormones get out of balance.
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Post by Bob on Feb 14, 2014 17:58:04 GMT -8
I like to play the characters in character somewhat, but that's why I select the people I select. If I had somebody wimpy on the team, they wouldn't have high ATK, but I'd either put them in a non ATK-y position or just not pick 'em. Granted, most FF characters are badass and can be imagined as being at least strong attackers (most deal 9999 or 99999 by the end of the game even if they're mages), so that's pretty easy. But yeah, I pick players based on how I think they'd perform.
I must say though, I'm kinda glad to see Loveless doing so well again. They started out the league as the ones to beat, then they fell into a middle tier for a bit, but have been rising swiftly since. Now, they're easily the team to beat in the league. Nice to have a tough team in the competition to be the...shit, I was going to make a Mighty Ducks reference, but I can't remember who they play at the end of the movie! So I'll just quack.
Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack! Quack!
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Post by countlieberkuhn on Feb 15, 2014 10:52:07 GMT -8
We need a manly Brit around us at all times or else our hormones get out of balance. Because I'm oh so manly. Oh yes. Check these huge bulging weeds I call biceps!
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Post by Fleck on Feb 15, 2014 12:53:31 GMT -8
Oh my!
*swoons*
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