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Post subject:
 Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 10:46 AM
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Joined: May 19, 2010
Posts: 110
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@Jeff, AFAIK, the reason Spike 2008 started with a progressive system is because this has been the traditional norm for the Blood Bowl/NAF Championship tourny itself. It's "progressive" in name only, as it's really just the default GW/NAF resurrection tourny ruleset.
We and various other tournaments have started to gravitate towards skill packs over the last few years. My hunch is that this has become more intuitive since LRB6 did its best to close the gap between top tier 1 teams and the rest of the races. The LRB has advanced, it makes sense that tourny meta-rules would too.
It could also simply be that there is now more exposure to different ideas than the template used by Nottingham/NAF. TOs are starting to adapt it to their needs. For example, there are some really creative systems like Ironmanj out there that seek a better formula to balance tournament play for everyone.
@Lizardcore, everyone goes there to have fun (even me).  I think we should take that as a given. My point though is that there are always coaches who want to win (even tier 2 and stunty coaches) and that some rulesets are much better at opening up variety than others. Also, let's not lose sight of the fact that the stigma of winning with a power-roster is lessened if you're not allowed to exploit spamming. You shouldn't feel bad for trying to win and the ruleset should be robust enough not to be exploited to its discredit.
Ideally, the TO can do a good job of giving everyone an experience that's exciting. You might not get it exactly right, but I think it can get better each year. Rules favouring the same tier 1 teams will make the final rounds seem like groundhog day for both coaches. |
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Lizardcore |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 10:57 AM
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Joined: Apr 07, 2004
Posts: 513
Status: Offline
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Taxal wrote: Quote:
I prefer everything up front. (thats what she said)
Who`s that..my Mum?
OMG, the NATC is featuring your mum as main attraction ?
sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet |
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Daggers |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 11:07 AM
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Joined: Dec 07, 2006
Canada
Posts: 1618
Location: Canada
Status: Offline
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Lizardcore wrote: Taxal wrote: Quote:
I prefer everything up front. (thats what she said)
Who`s that..my Mum?
OMG, the NATC is featuring your mum as main attraction ?
sweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeet
Well, it is in Vegas. She could expand her clientelle to a whole new group of Blood Bowlers. |
_________________
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Check out NAFCANADA.ca for the latest tournaments in Canada.
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zootsuitjeff |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 11:11 AM
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Joined: Jan 29, 2010
United States of America
Posts: 125
Location: United States of America
Status: Offline
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Khail wrote:
I still haven't seen an argument for Progressive being a more balanced ruleset that encourages a more diverse field of teams. If nobody can get behind it being a more balanced/diverse format, why do we want to stick with it?
My contention is that a Progressive rule set would require more adaptability/flexibility for a successful team, because they can't simply min/max their roster to find the "ideal" roster for the given TV & skill pack. Since the roster changes slightly it would require the successful coach to make slight adjustments to their approach.
One critique I did hear about WC2 rule set was that it tended to favor Undead, simply because the TV and skill packs allowed one to optimize a roster for that race. I tend to think that will happen with any skill pack, but that changing skills will mitigate that optimization to some extent. |
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Jonny_P |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 11:18 AM
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Joined: Feb 10, 2003
United States of America
Posts: 899
Location: United States of America
Status: Offline
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Oh I forgot one thing in my post.
I am a fan of "0-2 of the same skill" restriction.
There are enough viable skills out there that can be taken and used effectively without the crutch of arming an entire team with Block, Guard, etc.
With that said, I also like allowing players to have 0-2 skills added too. Teams like Chaos and Chaos Pact now become competitive when you get players to the 16SPP level. |
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delevus |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 12:36 PM
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Joined: May 20, 2007
Posts: 57
Status: Offline
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I tend to prefer builds that are skill cap of 2 myself. This is mainly to encourage diversity in builds.
The progressive team builds may alter some teams win rate a bit. However, I do not think it will change the win rates of the top tier teams that much. Teams that start with less core skills will always be hindered. Starting with a few extra block pieces is splitting hairs when the top teams are picking up Guard and Mighty Blow to widen the disparity. My preference in the matter is having skills upfront though. It can make roster verification so much simpler and I prefer to have more skills for longer. I would like to believe there isn't someone that desperate to win that they change their rosters before each game, but you never know. |
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Khail |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 12:44 PM
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Joined: Feb 14, 2003
United States of America
Posts: 63
Location: United States of America
Status: Offline
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zootsuitjeff wrote: Khail wrote:
I still haven't seen an argument for Progressive being a more balanced ruleset that encourages a more diverse field of teams. If nobody can get behind it being a more balanced/diverse format, why do we want to stick with it?
My contention is that a Progressive rule set would require more adaptability/flexibility for a successful team, because they can't simply min/max their roster to find the "ideal" roster for the given TV & skill pack. Since the roster changes slightly it would require the successful coach to make slight adjustments to their approach.
One critique I did hear about WC2 rule set was that it tended to favor Undead, simply because the TV and skill packs allowed one to optimize a roster for that race. I tend to think that will happen with any skill pack, but that changing skills will mitigate that optimization to some extent.
I get that Jeff - it does require the coach to play their team at varying levels of development, somewhat like running the team in a league. Since this is a competition, it forces a coach gunning for the top tables to pick a team that is good at low levels of development (3 skills) as well as medium levels (5-7 skills). That limits the diversity of viable races drastically.
At medium levels of development, more races become viable. Can we agree on that? |
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United States Pacific Northwest
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Rat City Blood Bowl League
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zootsuitjeff |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 02:22 PM
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Joined: Jan 29, 2010
United States of America
Posts: 125
Location: United States of America
Status: Offline
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Khail wrote:
At medium levels of development, more races become viable. Can we agree on that?
No, not really. I CAN agree that there are more viable teams at 1100TV & 6 skills, versus 1000TV and 0 skills. 1100TV/3 Skills versus 1100TV/5-7 Skills I am much more dubious about. At least I haven't seen the evidence to support that.
Here's a what if hypothetical: would you have as many objections if the skill pack was something like 5-7-9 skills or 6-8-10? |
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Lizardcore |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 02:29 PM
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Joined: Apr 07, 2004
Posts: 513
Status: Offline
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| [quote="zootsuitjeff"] Khail wrote:
Here's a what if hypothetical: would you have as many objections if the skill pack was something like 5-7-9 skills or 6-8-10?
Forget it. 9 skills was at the first WC, and I can tell you that the sunday was rough (tired of partying and playing, trying to remember 9 skills out of your own roster was challenging, so forget about the opponents ).
For the different skills different days, it's like 3 different tournaments. You have to coach differently every day, which is a nice challenge for some coaches (but might be annoying for others, I get that). that itself creates diversity. |
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Khail |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 03:04 PM
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Joined: Feb 14, 2003
United States of America
Posts: 63
Location: United States of America
Status: Offline
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I'd have less objections with more starting skills, but at that point we're just doing progression for progression's sake. Which makes it harder on a) the organizers, and b) the players. So why bother?
I'm not sure how to respond if you think that the pool of viable teams with 3 skills is the same as the pool of viable teams with 6 skills. Dark Elves, High Elves, Norse, Chaos Dwarfs, Skaven, Humans, and Lizards all open up when they've got the tools to combat Woodies or Dwarfs while still being able to do "their thing". Especially with a skill cap, which stops "oh great, 6 guarding Dwarfs" issue. We've seen it at Spike and at RCR over the last couple years - aka, evidence. |
_________________
NAF Regional Tournament Coordinator
United States Pacific Northwest
Commissioner
Rat City Blood Bowl League
Seattle, WA
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zootsuitjeff |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 03:39 PM
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Joined: Jan 29, 2010
United States of America
Posts: 125
Location: United States of America
Status: Offline
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Khail wrote: We've seen it at Spike and at RCR over the last couple years - aka, evidence.
Yes, the answer is if you are using RCR I, Spike 2011, & RCR II as the totality of your evidence to support that that tournament setup is superior to all others, then I do find that to be a rather anecdotal/narrow sample size with a relatively small pool of players. I would like to get more opinions/feedback first. |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 04:16 PM
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Joined: May 19, 2010
Posts: 110
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zootsuitjeff wrote: Khail wrote: We've seen it at Spike and at RCR over the last couple years - aka, evidence.
Yes, the answer is if you are using RCR I, Spike 2011, & RCR II as the totality of your evidence to support that tournament setup is superior to all others, then I do find that to be a rather anecdotal/narrow sample size with a relatively small pool of players. I would like to get more opinions/feedback first.
At the same time Jeff your sample size is basically WC II and similar NAF tournies like the Blood Bowl.
As Khail pointed out, we've advanced a positive argument for a skill pack, both in terms of player and organizer ease as well as competitive balancing.
There is not yet one positive argument for the NAF progression model besides "WC II did it."
I know you guys are really interested in appealing to NAF tourny-goers for the prospects of WC III. But you can either make NATC a test-drive for WW III or you can actually try to make NATC succeed on it's own identity.
You don't even have to use our skill pack idea. You could use Ironmanj or something of your own choosing. If you don't, you're tacitly agreeing to a leaderboard that looks like a repeat of this:
Blood Bowl 2012: http://img526.imageshack.us/img526/3531/capturenq.png
WC II: http://thenaf.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=5374
At WC II there were 63 Wood Elf and 62 Undead teams. The next more prevalent race was Orcs at 46--and that's a race we usually dismiss somewhat because everyone has those Orc figs! http://thenaf.net/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=5376
There is evidence, it just doesn't support the claim that progressive systems encourage any variety or balance.
The more tenuous your claim to "progression" tournaments become, the more I worry that your primary goal is a dry-run of WC III. It isn't the ruleset, but rather the mindset that attempts to replicate WC II in full that I'm concerned about. Clearly, if you do go with this line of thinking, then you see no need to tweak a system that provides a blunt signal to coaches: play these teams if you want to win in our tournament.
Heck, even if you tried something brand new, at the very least you could hope that the unknown variables would help encourage a broader sign up than the tournies you're modeling NATC on. |
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zootsuitjeff |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 05:12 PM
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Joined: Jan 29, 2010
United States of America
Posts: 125
Location: United States of America
Status: Offline
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Kavin,
1) I'm not worried at all about WC3, and won't be thinking about it until after next May. I may or may not be interested in helping out with a bid for that, we will see how this goes. I do suppose I am thinking of following some aspects of WC2 since I believe it was a fun tournament, and since that was a tournament that I and most attendees enjoyed, and most NA coaches including you did not attend, my goal is to have a similar tournament NA coaches to experience that. It is NOT to have a WC3 dry run.
2) Please see my above posts for the positive argument for using the progression model. "My contention is that a Progressive rule set would require more adaptability/flexibility for a successful team," ... etc. I am trying to incentivize some flexibility and adaptability, which I don't feel is exemplified by advocating for a rules set that is exactly the same as all the other tournaments you've recently attended.
3) My "sample size" includes all of the tourneys I've attended, WC2, WCQ, OSBC, Colleges of Magic, Spike, RCR, Chaos Cup, Zlurpee Bowl, RMR, etc to name some of them. Many of those use a 6 normal style skill pack, many of those used other formats. Only a very few of those were critiqued as broken. I do admit that I am not a super competitive player, so I appreciate your perspective. However my thesis is that MANY different styles of tournament can be competitive, fair, and fun, where as you seem to be contending that ONLY the tournament style you are advocating will be competitive,fair, and fun.
4) I have a belief that ANY rule set we finalize on will be min/maxed by competitive players/power gamers, and that certain races will be more common than others. I am not yet convinced that is less likely to happen with the skill pack you suggest. I would also contend that the large number of Undead teams at WC2 was not because of the progressive aspect of the ruleset, but because the Team Value and the 2 Double skills in the skill pack was a particular sweet spot for that roster. I believe that this minmaxing will be unavoidable, but will try to mitigate in other ways, for instance having prizes for the best team of every individual race. |
Last edited by zootsuitjeff on Jun 14, 2012 - 05:17 PM; edited 1 time in total
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Lizardcore |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 05:12 PM
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Joined: Apr 07, 2004
Posts: 513
Status: Offline
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@ Warpstone: You're being a bit rough here. I know you're trying to be constructive and you're passionate about BB, but so are the guys that are actually to organize it while we might be playing / enjoying it. I kinda agree with you on the statement : "progressive skills is an issue". But regarding the WE and Undead statement, the skill cap is actually making it worse... If you want to have tier2/3 teams, there are plenty of other options but certainly not the skill cap.
Regarding the dry run for WCIII, I think the intention to use the WCII rules is just: It is going to be a bigger tournament than we ever had in north-america, lets use something that worked for a tournament of that size (or lets say of 100 coaches in a team tournament format). You dont "try" for a tournament of that size when people are travelling from all-around the word...
edit: we posted at the same time...
zootsuitjeff wrote: I believe that this minmaxing will be unavoidable, but will try to mitigate in other ways, for instance having prizes for the best team of every individual race.
that's a great idea! or a prize for best team of each tier |
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SierraKiloBravo |
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Post subject:
Posted: Jun 14, 2012 - 06:01 PM
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Joined: Jun 22, 2008
Dublin CA
Posts: 60
Location: Dublin CA
Status: Offline
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Warpstone wrote:
There is not yet one positive argument for the NAF progression model besides "WC II did it."
It encourages coaches to deal with team improvements over time, which I believe is a greater test of skill than coaching a static team over the same time span. It forces a coach to consider the order of a team's advancement so as to put that coach in the best position to deal with the majority of situations that the coach will deal with over the course of several matches, as well as forcing a coach to prioritize what he considers the greatest threats to his success in early and mid development.
"WC did it" to me is a valid reason because WCII had more participants than in every West Coast tournament over the past five years combined. The overwhelming response from that tournament, again as reported in the NAF WC subforum, was that it was successful.
As an aside, I took a look at Spike's 2011 results, as Spike is being offered as a specific example of a fixed skill set tournament that encouraged more "interesting play" resulting from supposed racial diversity. From what I can tell by Spike's reporting, the 2011 most common races were (in order) orcs, skaven, dwarves and lizards, with the top 5 placing teams being dwarves, norse, skaven, lizards and dwarves. It's somewhat confusing to me that set skill packs have been advanced as creating a more diverse racial atmosphere among the top performing teams when, at least to me, Spike's numbers suggest that the best performing races were races that historically perform better. It sort of leads me to conclude that there's another reason, apart from desiring racial diversity, that is the source of the resistance.
In the end, if the set skill packet ruleset does not impact the likelihood of less competitive races being competitive, then I don't understand why the ruleset is being attacked for encouraging a coach to only take a race that historically performs well.
I guess we could give every coach who takes Chaos the ability to roster Borak for free, or give every coach who takes Vampires the ability to roster the Count for free. That might increase the number of Chaos or Vampire coaches in the tournament. (OK, this is in jest, but only sort of). |
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