Proposed Changes to the 2015 UK Rankings

[OldManMyke]

Oh I like the idea of multipliers for rounds to the number of people counting.  Does that mean that a person coming bottom of a 5 round tournament would get 7 points? (140% of 5)

[mythicFOX]

Oh I like the idea of multipliers for rounds to the number of people counting.  Does that mean that a person coming bottom of a 5 round tournament would get 7 points? (140% of 5)

 

Not quite. 

 

Assume a player comes 20th out of 20.  The event would count as having 28 players for scoring (140%). So that player would score as if they came 20th out of 28 (33.15pts).

 

The winner would score as coming 1st out of 28 (100pts), rather than 1st out of 20 (92pts).

[OldManMyke]

Right I see.  So a 28 person 5 round event counts as having 39 players?  Or should 4 rounds be considered 100% 3 rounds considered 90 and 5 rounds 120

[Oshova]

 @Oshava I can totally see where you are coming from, but I think where the contention lies is what you use the rankings for.

 

 For me the rankings is best used not to prove who are the best players in the country but for banter and setting personal goals. Elo might show more accurately who is top and not, but the difficulty of making goals makes it counter to purpose in my minds. I suppose it depends on how seriously you take it. 

 

But the rankings do show who is the best in the area concerned... that is what they achieve. They also give the opportunity for bragging rights, because you can still rank higher or lower than your mates. But you have the added joy of knowing just how much better or worse you are. And when you beat that player higher than you in the rankings, you get the reward of being able to really know how much better that player is than you... and yet you still won!

[OldManMyke]

SO one other thing I wanted to put out there was about Henchman lead games.  Personally I think in ranked events games should be 40ss plus and master lead.  Thoughts

?

[Oshova]

I would agree with that Mike. As far as I am concerned, Henchman led games aren't balanced. So much work was put in during all the testing to get Masters balanced to each other, and that has worked. The same testing wasn't done on Henchmen, and as such some are more powerful than others when it comes to leading a crew.

[mythicFOX]

Right I see.  So a 28 person 5 round event counts as having 39 players?  Or should 4 rounds be considered 100% 3 rounds considered 90 and 5 rounds 120

 

Yeah 28 x 1.4 = 39.2 so call it 39.

 

I would just say; less than five rounds 100%, five or more rounds 140%.   You could scale it though.

 

SO one other thing I wanted to put out there was about Henchman lead games.  Personally I think in ranked events games should be 40ss plus and master lead.  Thoughts

?

 

Personally I'd agree with that. 

[MariFaux]

Also, at the moments all the TOs need to submit is a list of players in the (hopefully) right order. ELO would complicate things for the TOs and Dave (and whoever else is involved in the providing side of the rankings), what is all done voluntarily and in free time. So I suppose the people that do the work (for us) have the last say in it?

[Wake of Godzilla]

Hi - thanks for putting up an interesting thread.

 

Lots of topics going on at once, but in my opinion - 

 

1. Master qualification should be singles only - absolutely, happy to do some fun team/double events but I think for the rankings it should be singles only. Unless I can always have Joel, Doxy, Greg and Ant on my team. Then it should totally count.

2. Minimum 12 players - if I'm honest I can't remember an event that pulled less than 12 players and with wave 2 arsenal decks out (I know large groups that have stayed out of the game due to these not being available). However to my mind the rankings are in place to help increase the community and activity, which they seam to have in the last 12 month. If people really feel that this could damage the scene then leave it at 8. 

3. Last Place score calculation - sounds good, I think its harsh on people who have probably lost every game all day to then make them feel that they walked away with nothing.

4. ELO - This sounds like a fine way of calculating something as well, I do like the idea. Would it also start to factoring into seeding 1st rounds? What about a player who comes in new, has a few games and smashes a high ranking player(s) and then doesn't play again all year?

5. Number of Rounds - I like the system that Mythic Fox is proposing, I can't get to many 2 day events due to real life but its good to see these events rewarded as they are harder to win. This system doesn't penalize 3 round events or require a new points cap for events. An elegant solution.

6. Henchmen lead games - fully agree, while fun and a good way to get round the round limits not a balanced part of the game. However it would be a shame to see them gone from the scene entirely and would be great in Story Encounter games.

 

Thanks again for opening up the conversation and letting everyone have some input.

[Oshova]

@Wake Of Godzilla

 

4- Winning against a high ranking player in your first game will give you a big boost to points. But it shouldn't put you in crazy high placing. In a community as large as this, doing awesome at 1 tournament and then not playing the rest of the year isn't going to put you in the top 16. It probably isn't even going to put you in the top 20 or 30. In a similar way to the current rankings, if you come in and have 4 awesome tournies, smashing big players left, right, and centre. Then yes you are going to have a high score. But as long as there are a good number of ranked tournaments to use, then you are going to need a good number of good tournaments to get up the rankings.

 

Obviously, if you are doing well towards the end of the year, are in a possible Masters qualification slot etc... then maybe some people would think twice about going to more tournies as their score may drop... but with the community as it is right now, people go to tournaments to play games and have fun. Rankings and Masters are extra to that. Also, if you don't go to a tournament, then that leaves it open to other people to end up higher than you... wouldn't you rather have it in your own hands?

[Zac]

For the Elo discussion:

Does anyone think that the current top of the rankings is not reflective of the best players of the scene?

Issue with it as I see it:

It will stop players from trying out goofy builds. If every game effects your rankings, people will be discouraged from running crazy ideas to see how they run. Things like Gremlins for Joel would be less likely to happen, as you would never be able to take a tournament lightly.

[Mike3838]

Including a couple of smaller Henchman led games is currently (unless you split the field a-la Vappafaux next year) the only way to realistically squeeze 4 games into a single day.

 

I do agree with the less tight balance concerns of Henchman games, but disallowing them for rankings will lead us invariably to a calendar of 3 round events only and the winner differentiation issues that brings.

 

Given that, I'm of the opinion that we might want to revisit the question of 1st round seedings to help mitigate the effect of the first round draw.

[OldManMyke]

100 minute games with 20 minute breaks gives an 8 hour schedule so running 9 till 5.30 should be doable

[Oshova]

I'm sure at some point this year Clousseau ran a 1 day with 4 rounds. You have to be on the ball as a TO, and keep everything flowing nicely. But it can be done.

With the size of tournaments currently, we need 4 games to separate well anyway. So why not strive for that. It requires practice running tournaments, so your first go at TO is probably not going to be a 1 day, 4 round tournament. =p

[mythicFOX]

IMHO the answer is splitting more events like VAPPA, rather than playing more small games. 

[Wake of Godzilla]

@OSHOVA okay understood, thank you for explaining.

 

So getting a little of topic (but still relevant) with number of rounds and play time I think that 4 can be achieved at 40ss. Especially if the format of the event means that people are planning list a little more. Fixed masters or pool's limit the total number of options and you could put out the schemes and strats in the players pack. Then the players can turn up prepared and tweak a list a little to the game. You could even see some more tournament formats coming out such as multiple fixed lists.

 

Much like deployment this year, where many players didn't realise how much more fun it makes the game, it might be time to move away from our sacred cows of M1.5 and experimenting with formats to find the one that is right for the scene. 

[Barnaberible]

 

 

 

 

Given that, I'm of the opinion that we might want to revisit the question of 1st round seedings to help mitigate the effect of the first round draw.

 

I have always been an advocate of at least trying this. With all the tournaments we have I cant believe it hasn't been tried yet to see the results.

[Barnaberible]

 

 with number of rounds and play time I think that 4 can be achieved at 40ss. 

 

I'm not 100% convinced that 40ss is a balanced level for tournament play, not saying it should be prohibited but equally not sure it should become the norm.

[mythicFOX]

I have always been an advocate of at least trying this. With all the tournaments we have I cant believe it hasn't been tried yet to see the results.

 

What I don't quite get here is how you'll do this in practice, and what the expected outcome is?  People talk about it but I'm not sure anyone's actually come up with a system that looks like it'll do something meaningful.

 

I'm not 100% convinced that 40ss is a balanced level for tournament play, not saying it should be prohibited but equally not sure it should become the norm.

 

Agreed I'd like to see a good mix of events between 40ss and 50ss.

[Adran]

SO one other thing I wanted to put out there was about Henchman lead games.  Personally I think in ranked events games should be 40ss plus and master lead.  Thoughts

?

 

Can I re-answer this in about a month? (plug- Come and play in the RefauxGT on Saturday 8th November - Henchmen led 40ss games)

I know I've not played many henchmen led games, but since there is a fairly basic calculation as to the worth of a henchman as a leader (cost + cache =13 in all cases except the 2 free henchmen) I'm not sure how unbalanced they can be compared to them already in a master lead game.

I would also look at the numebr of Henchemn led games thta have been played by the community (Not counting Hardcore, thats very different) and think the format is far too unknown to say its unbalanced.

I can't currently see any henchman that would unbalance a game, and having them as a leader rather than a master is probably going to be more balanced overall. Its certainly going to change the game a lot in making people play differently, but I certainly wouldn't want it to replace master lead as the norm.

 

I can certainly agree that games that go too far from the 50 ss range of balance are more likely to be more viariable, an d would start thinkiong games below 35 are probably the point (although again I don't have much experience, I know Septembers curse was one of the few 40ss tournements I've seen results for, and summoning looked more powerful. I also know a lot of the playtest battle reports were at 41 ss.)

 

Timing

So far 3 of the 4 events ran in Kent were 1 day events with 4 rounds. they didn't seem too tight for time to me, and with the numbers, 4 rounds was worth the effort

My tournement next month will be 4 rounds if it has enough people to make 4 rounds worthwhile.

 

I'd be interested in seeing the ELO system in use, but I do question if it actually gives a more accurate outcome, or does it crystalise the areas more. Fortuantly at the moment there is a decent number of peopel travelling for events, but if the North had 6000 points, whilst the south only had 3000 because we had half the number of players, then its much harder to compare the scores. I already personally struggle to get enough events to count each year.  

 

How many events over the last year wouldn't have counted if the cut of was 12? I can think of a few, and if that had meant people ran fewer events I think that would be a bad thing on the whole (especially as I only get a few wife passes a year).

 

Over all, changes aren't going to affect my malifaux play per say, as long as they don't have a major effect on the number of events being run.

I'm ok with encouraging larger events, and 2 day events, currently unsure on the balance of Henchmen led games and hope that smaller tournements don't stop happening if the minimum number required to be ranked does go up (but otherwise agree that it should go up).

[OldManMyke]

On the 12 number this is what would be excluded this year

 

----------------------------------------
name                      players rounds
----------------------------------------
Paddyfaux                      10      5
Dark Breach                    11      3
Pubfaux                         8      7
Through the Looking Glass      10      3
Toy Soldier                     8      5
Somers End                     11      3
Fools of Fate                   9      3
WAAC Midnight Madness           8      3
Name of the Master             10      3

 

So the small events at TTN would be the worst sufferers, but we do have a plan in place to build those up over the next year

 

On the 40ss thing, TBH I'm not sure the game is balanced at that points level either, certainly anecdotal evidence is that summoners are pushed well up the power curve at that level.

[Barnaberible]

 

What I don't quite get here is how you'll do this in practice, and what the expected outcome is?  People talk about it but I'm not sure anyone's actually come up with a system that looks like it'll do something meaningful.

 

 

The idea would be that in round 1 the highest ranked player would be paired with the lowest ranked player, second highest against second lowest, etc, etc

 

This would avoid the 'top' players being paired against each other in the first round, and effectively ending one of the pairs chances of winning the tournament in the first round (particularly in a 3 round tournament) and also eliminate the random possibility of someone being able to gain a massive VP diff in the first round.

 

It would also mean that new (lower ranked) players would be paired with someone that knows the game well and thus speed up their first round games and reduce rule questions and also allow these players a guaranteed opportunity to play one of the better players and gain some invaluable experience and maybe a few tricks of the trade.

 

On the downside it would mean that there is the opportunity for new players to be absolutely stomped at their first game in a tournament and put them off, but I dont think the community is like that.

[Malal]

SO one other thing I wanted to put out there was about Henchman lead games.  Personally I think in ranked events games should be 40ss plus and master lead.  Thoughts

?

 

 

I would agree with that Mike. As far as I am concerned, Henchman led games aren't balanced. So much work was put in during all the testing to get Masters balanced to each other, and that has worked. The same testing wasn't done on Henchmen, and as such some are more powerful than others when it comes to leading a crew.

 

I disagree, not that all henchmen aren't perfectly balanced, that probably is the case, but that henchmen games shouldn't be ranked.

Imo, it's just another puzzle to solve. Henchman A might be weak against Henchman X from another faction but you could've taken Henchman B, C or D instead. I think it is possible to balance henchman led games massively by making them pool events and limiting summoning to models in the pool (as summoning in smaller games seems to be one of the biggest things to throw off balance)

If we can include smaller games, hopefully we'll start seeing more tournaments over 3 rounds. One of my biggest problems (and even then it's a minor one in the grand scheme of things) is that you can win all 3 games and not even podium.

 

[Adran]

Thank you for the list Mike. Its the TTN events in particular that I don't want to vanish, event though i've not been free for the last few.

 

The percieved wisdom is that summoning in smaller games is more powerful. But almost all the summoning is done by masters.

[leebat]

 

 

The percieved wisdom is that summoning in smaller games is more powerful. But almost all the summoning is done by masters.

 

or any resser with the new leader upgrade ?