On Tournaments or A Humble Suggestion for GG2017

[Bengt]

 

As I understand it, the reason why the differential exists is because of the practical situation that scores don't vary widely enough without it.  And multi-way ties don't look nice in the final results.

Differential has the problem that it's essentially a function of the random variable 'How ineffective was your opponent?' which ends up being 'Who did you have for an opponent?'  Strength of Schedule has the same problem of depending entirely on 'Who did you have for an opponent?'  If you reward or penalize the player based on the results of the pairing system, you're rewarding or penalizing them for something they had no control over.  At worst, you've just randomly rigged the results of the tournament instead of influencing player behavior.

It would make a lot more sense, and remove the random pairing bias, if the tie breaker was replaced by a score for something indirectly associated with concentrating on the schemes.  Something like "Number of scheme markers placed during the first five turns of the game (or while the other player still has models in play)", probably capped at some maximum value per turn.  The choice of details pretty much comes down to how strong the desire to penalize one player for wiping out the other player's crew (or otherwise crushing them) is.

If the player actually has the ability to determine their tie breaker score then it becomes effective to say "If you do one of these things which are negative to overall experience, this score is going to be terrible."  That's what a secondary score needs to do in order to influence player behavior.

 

In you continue that line of thought you could as easily say that winning or losing is based on the random result of pairings as well. So I don't think the point you are making goes anywhere.

The problem with scheme markers is that Wyrd has, for whatever reason, decided to use them for myriad of game effects that has nothing to do with wining the game with the result that some models have it a lot easier to spam them all over the place. We now even have some models who place enemy scheme markers (Obey type effects could always do it, but now it happens directly). Now I realise Scheme Markers was just an example but I think it would very hard to find anything in the game to measure that either isn't similarly "tainted" or is unworkably complex.

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As for the whole the argument that counting differential makes for less fun games, I disagree strongly to say the least. If I realised someone was going easy on me in anything but a teaching/demo game I would be infinitely more disappointed in the experience than if I was tabled turn two or whatever. I also think that if someone takes on a more skilled person in any kind of endeavour what so ever and is discouraged if they do poorly they have such unrealistic expectations on life that they should thankful that they had this life lesson on something as benign as a table top game.

[Kadeton]

 

As for the whole the argument that counting differential makes for less fun games, I disagree strongly to say the least. If I realised someone was going easy on me in anything but a teaching/demo game I would be infinitely more disappointed in the experience than if I was tabled turn two or whatever. I also think that if someone takes on a more skilled person in any kind of endeavour what so ever and is discouraged if they do poorly they have such unrealistic expectations on life that they should thankful that they had this life lesson on something as benign as a table top game.

I don't think it's a case of people "going easy" on their opponents. The game becomes far less enjoyable once both players agree that the outcome is certain - at that stage, spending the next half hour or so brutally crushing every last point out of the opponent isn't even going to be interesting. It's just going through the motions. If you and your opponent view that as an interesting challenge and they want to see how many points they can eke out before they inevitably lose, that's cool, play your game. I just don't agree that everyone should be forced to play that experience out if they don't want to. It's not "going easy", it's just skipping the bits that aren't fun.

I also think there's a big difference between "being discouraged by doing poorly against a more skilled person" and "not enjoying being used as a punching bag". Most of the newer players I've met have had realistic expectations and taken their losses with good grace, but they (and I) aren't getting much enjoyment out of a 10-0 thrashing. You're asking people to spend an entire day or two playing in your tournament - if they're not enjoying it, what's the likelihood they'll come back for the next one?

In a martial arts tournament, you don't prove anything by beating your opponent unconscious (other than you're a terrible person) - you let them tap out when they've had enough. Basically, that's the principle I'd like to see applied. This is a game - the idea is for both players to enjoy themselves. The problem with differential scoring is that it forces people to play on past the point where the fun stops, which runs counter to that fundamental idea. We need a way to let players "tap out" while still having some metric to separate players with equal numbers of wins into some kind of hierarchy.

[TheJoyInGaming]

As much as i prefer the idea of SOS determining a tournament winner i think it is much hard to measure than Differentials in practice. Not only would you have to measure my SOS in a tournament but you would have to measure those i won and lost against. What if i faced players that didn't have stellar Win-Loss records but that is because they faced very strong opponents?

I also believe that measuring by Differential actually encourages and rewards player skill more. Denial of your opponent's points is just as important as scoring your own and by measuring differential you actually encourage players to play to that aspect of the game that could often be neglected otherwise.

[chryspainthemum]

 

In a martial arts tournament, you don't prove anything by beating your opponent unconscious (other than you're a terrible person) - you let them tap out when they've had enough. Basically, that's the principle I'd like to see applied. This is a game - the idea is for both players to enjoy themselves. The problem with differential scoring is that it forces people to play on past the point where the fun stops, which runs counter to that fundamental idea. We need a way to let players "tap out" while still having some metric to separate players with equal numbers of wins into some kind of hierarchy.

But you can tap out? At any point in a tournament game you can choose to drop, and your opponent counts as having scored the full 10 points. I don't understand how differential scoring forces people to play past the point where fun stops, when at literally any point in a tournament you can forfeit the game. And if scoring points is more important to you than dropping out, then that is your decision...?

 

As someone who plays competitive MTG, sos is really not more 'feel goods' than differential. It still sucks to get eked out of placing because you happened to get matched up against weaker players. This is especially true in Magic because ties (in larger tourneys) can be determined by something as small as .01 difference in SOS and only the top 8 placements get any kind of recognition/prizing.

[Bengt]

 

I don't think it's a case of people "going easy" on their opponents. The game becomes far less enjoyable once both players agree that the outcome is certain - at that stage, spending the next half hour or so brutally crushing every last point out of the opponent isn't even going to be interesting. It's just going through the motions. If you and your opponent view that as an interesting challenge and they want to see how many points they can eke out before they inevitably lose, that's cool, play your game. I just don't agree that everyone should be forced to play that experience out if they don't want to. It's not "going easy", it's just skipping the bits that aren't fun.

I also think there's a big difference between "being discouraged by doing poorly against a more skilled person" and "not enjoying being used as a punching bag". Most of the newer players I've met have had realistic expectations and taken their losses with good grace, but they (and I) aren't getting much enjoyment out of a 10-0 thrashing. You're asking people to spend an entire day or two playing in your tournament - if they're not enjoying it, what's the likelihood they'll come back for the next one?

In a martial arts tournament, you don't prove anything by beating your opponent unconscious (other than you're a terrible person) - you let them tap out when they've had enough. Basically, that's the principle I'd like to see applied. This is a game - the idea is for both players to enjoy themselves. The problem with differential scoring is that it forces people to play on past the point where the fun stops, which runs counter to that fundamental idea. We need a way to let players "tap out" while still having some metric to separate players with equal numbers of wins into some kind of hierarchy.

So I guess you consider win/loss to be the result of the match? Personally I consider the score to be the result, so to me the match isn't decided until that is determined, and "losing less"/"winning more" is an interesting activity to me. Obviously if one side is tabled the score is decided by discussion or the remaining player doing some of his remaining activations if it's unclear if he can get to the right spots in time.

I don't think counting the score has much correlation with occurrence of thrashings. If one player totally dominates the other player why does counting the score make it more or less fun for you? With the way Malifaux works if a 10-0 is about to happen it is likely to be obvious pretty early. And a conceded game isn't very fun either, is it? Also, unless someone is significantly worse than everyone else at the tournament (which seems unlikely to happen very often) they are likely to get a more even game in the next round. Indeed it's more likely that they'll get an even game if you count the score instead of just paring them against a random opponent with same number of losses.

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After thinking about this I would definitely prefer a system that uses the score as the first sorting parameter, not win/loss. Especially if the tournament has too many players for optimal Swiss, which seems to be very common. 

[Kadeton]

 

But you can tap out? At any point in a tournament game you can choose to drop, and your opponent counts as having scored the full 10 points. I don't understand how differential scoring forces people to play past the point where fun stops, when at literally any point in a tournament you can forfeit the game. And if scoring points is more important to you than dropping out, then that is your decision...?

Sure, you can, but in GG a conceded game means you're not allowed to play the rest of the event. That's a pretty big incentive to continue, even if the player knows they're going to lose and they're not having fun. That's also something that I think should be changed, but it speaks to a larger culture where conceding a game is seen as a hugely negative thing, when really it's a perfectly reasonable response to an unwinnable situation.

 

As someone who plays competitive MTG, sos is really not more 'feel goods' than differential. It still sucks to get eked out of placing because you happened to get matched up against weaker players. This is especially true in Magic because ties (in larger tourneys) can be determined by something as small as .01 difference in SOS and only the top 8 placements get any kind of recognition/prizing.

And yet, they tend to still use SoS rather than other methods of differentiation. Given that MtG is gaming's most popular competitive format, should we perhaps be taking more of our cues on how to run competitive events from that community? I certainly appreciate the community's acceptance of scooping a game when the outcome is clear.

 

So I guess you consider win/loss to be the result of the match? Personally I consider the score to be the result, so to me the match isn't decided until that is determined, and "losing less"/"winning more" is an interesting activity to me. Obviously if one side is tabled the score is decided by discussion or the remaining player doing some of his remaining activations if it's unclear if he can get to the right spots in time.

The outcome is winning or losing, yeah - that's how GG is structured. Differential is a tiebreaker. I'd just like to see a different tiebreaker that promotes different behaviour.

If differential is meaningful to you and your opponent, there would be nothing stopping you from playing out the game. It just wouldn't affect your score. If you find it interesting, go for it - you're engaged, you're having fun, that's awesome. If other players don't want to do that, they don't have to, and that's good too.

 

I don't think counting the score has much correlation with occurrence of thrashings. If one player totally dominates the other player why does counting the score make it more or less fun for you? With the way Malifaux works if a 10-0 is about to happen it is likely to be obvious pretty early. And a conceded game isn't very fun either, is it?

If you only care about win/loss, and one player is clearly going to receive a thrashing, there's no penalty for them just bowing out of the rest of the game because they don't want to play. If you care about differential there is a penalty, because playing out the game might mean they can squeeze out a 9-2 or whatever rather than 10-0, which is technically a better result... but that's still a pretty brutal game to play through.

Conceding a game might not be a great moment, but then you're free. You can wander around and watch other people's games, chat with your opponent about what you could do differently to avoid getting smashed next time, or just take a walk to clear your head. Playing out the game is just keeping you in that negative play experience for longer, for no good reason.

 

Also, unless someone is significantly worse than everyone else at the tournament (which seems unlikely to happen very often) they are likely to get a more even game in the next round. Indeed it's more likely that they'll get an even game if you count the score instead of just paring them against a random opponent with same number of losses.

This gets back to the original point of the thread - comparing the differentials won't be any more likely to give you an even game in the next round, because your score of 5-7 against a mediocre player might match you up against the person who went 3-5 against the best player at the event, and she's going to crush you like a bug. She's a better player than you, but while SoS would reflect that fact at the end of the event, differential might not. Either way it's a total crapshoot as to whether your second-round opponent is on your level.

[Bengt]

 

This gets back to the original point of the thread - comparing the differentials won't be any more likely to give you an even game in the next round, because your score of 5-7 against a mediocre player might match you up against the person who went 3-5 against the best player at the event, and she's going to crush you like a bug. She's a better player than you, but while SoS would reflect that fact at the end of the event, differential might not. Either way it's a total crapshoot as to whether your second-round opponent is on your level.

The initial 5-7 game was pretty even, then out hapless player gets a sound trashing from second best player and will face a weaker player in the third round. That is still only one seriously uneven match. No scoring system that only looks at the current tournament can help with that one match up, be it in the first or second round, only seeding can. Which makes me curious, the tournament scene in the UK seems pretty vibrant and you have a ranking system, but are there results enough to seed from? Have anyone tried for a normal tournament? I've learned from the AR podcast that there is one invite tournament based on the ranking, is the first round there seeded or random?

[Squirrelich]

 

Sure, you can, but in GG a conceded game means you're not allowed to play the rest of the event. That's a pretty big incentive to continue, even if the player knows they're going to lose and they're not having fun. That's also something that I think should be changed, but it speaks to a larger culture where conceding a game is seen as a hugely negative thing, when really it's a perfectly reasonable response to an unwinnable situation.

 

I think of conceding as more of agreed results in the rule packet. to quote: "On occasion it may be possible for players to know the outcome of the game before it reaches its natural conclusion, or the result of the game is clear but there is insufficient time to play the game to its natural conclusion. For example, it is turn four and neither player can score any more victory points, so the conclusion is forgone. Under these circumstances players may agree what the result of their game will be without playing it to completion. Players may not agree on a result which is not a likely outcome of the game as it stands. Players may not offer or receive any form of inducement to agree to the result of the game. Such agreements constitute cheating. Both players must agree on the result and the Organizer must be notified that the game has been agreed before any part of the game is packed away. The Organizer has the right to require the players to play the game to conclusion. This option is offered as a preference to players conceding games, as a full concession is handled differently."

There is no need to drop from the tourney. Just tell your opponent that they got you and you know it, agree on the likely out come and you've 'conceded'

 

 

And yet, they tend to still use SoS rather than other methods of differentiation. Given that MtG is gaming's most popular competitive format, should we perhaps be taking more of our cues on how to run competitive events from that community? I certainly appreciate the community's acceptance of scooping a game when the outcome is clear.

But magic has no difference mechanic. They even have multiple ways of winning the game (damage/decking/auto win cards). If they did have a difference mechanic who is to say they wouldn't use it instead.

[LunarSol]

 

As someone who plays competitive MTG, sos is really not more 'feel goods' than differential. It still sucks to get eked out of placing because you happened to get matched up against weaker players. This is especially true in Magic because ties (in larger tourneys) can be determined by something as small as .01 difference in SOS and only the top 8 placements get any kind of recognition/prizing.

Dirty secret about tie breakers.  All they do is take two players who had reasonably equal performances during the event and arbitrarily declare one better than the other despite not facing one another directly.  There's no system in the world that says "he's placed better than you cause reasons" that ultimately feels good.  Realistically, there's winners and X-1's on the podium, but the demands of prize support and player expectations create a need for further delineation.

[Yipikayey]

 

 

Why? If you are playing in a tournament, for any game, then it is understood that the game is WAAC (obviously within the rules of the game). In fact, I would say that if you go to a tournament and are upset about losing by a large differential, it is your fault for not understanding the stakes of the game. And this isn't just Malifaux... if you are playing a game where score is decided by match wins, you want to go 3-0, not 2-1. If you are playing soccer, you don't want to let your opponent score a few points because 'it'll make them feel good'.

 

At the end of the day, it is a game you play with others. If you are playing casually, keep that in mind. If you are playing in a tournament, keep that in mind. If in either case you are getting upset, then imo (as this is all opinion), you need to step back and rethink your hobbies.

I don't think anyone really disagrees that to measure the skill in a particular game where both players give their best, a 10 VP system is better than just a tertiary result such as W/D/L.

I certainly agree in tournaments which are big, give seeds, and have enough rounds. But community events such as tournaments, specially small ones, you want as many people as possible to play the tournaments, and then you have to compromise between all the people around to have a healthy amount of players on them, and for everyone to have a positive experience. If you are brand new, and expect to place well in a tournament, of course your expectations are too high, but a more reasonable expectation is to atleast have fun and decent games. 

So if you want to for people who just want an excuse, to play 3 games in one day, and have fun with buddies, a system which rewards big victories will result in poor experiences for those players. And you not only need, but you also want those players to continue engaged within the community.

But i don't think you are putting enough thought on how people feel about those games. I am a very competitive players, so for me it's not a problem, but for other person, can perfectly re-think why go to a tournament in the first place, since he doesn't enjoy the games he will have there, and just play with his closest pals only, and the end result long term is a fragmentation in the community, and complete insularity. Just because there were people who wanted the small tournaments to be the best representation on competition as possible.

Obviously, this is all based on context. Some people might live in a city where there are like 4-5 FLGS which run tournaments often, where this won't be a big problem, and there are other people who play in zones where at best there are 20-30 players, and only 4-5 are competitive. It's politics like usual, you need to find a compromise for the good of the community, and there will always be people who will lose a little, and others will win some.

Specially for a 3 round tournament, where VP's between players who didn't face each other, really won't tell you much about how they ranked. Your performance on a given tournament can't be measured with perfect accuracy to be compared to others, so there will be always little grievances on who placed 2nd, 3rd, 4th... etc. If 2 people won all their games that day, if both don't play each other in a final game, the result will not be exact anyways. 

Which is why, while people agree that VPs is a better system to measure, it is not certain or factual, and therefore can be scrapped if expectations of a good chunk of the people attending to the tournament is that they don't want games where they will completely crushed in a sacrifice for the VP Gods

[chryspainthemum]

 

Dirty secret about tie breakers.  All they do is take two players who had reasonably equal performances during the event and arbitrarily declare one better than the other despite not facing one another directly.  There's no system in the world that says "he's placed better than you cause reasons" that ultimately feels good.  Realistically, there's winners and X-1's on the podium, but the demands of prize support and player expectations create a need for further delineation.

The program used pretty explicitly shows rankings. If two players are exactly equal in OGW (opponent game win), then yes it's arbitrarily decided, but that happens rarely. More often it's a very small percentage difference.

[LunarSol]

 

The program used pretty explicitly shows rankings. If two players are exactly equal in OGW (opponent game win), then yes it's arbitrarily decided, but that happens rarely. More often it's a very small percentage difference.

The reasons for determining a winner are perfectly clear, that's not what I mean.  What I mean is that the rules don't 'feel good' no matter what rules they are because they determine a winner between people who had no contact with one another over the course of the event.  Players forget that the only reason the tiebreaker exists is because there was a tie in the first place and ultimately, someone is given a lower ranking despite having essentially the same performance.