Brawl #2 Suggestions and Feedback

[Drake_XIV]

Yeah, that was the idea.  But there may be a problem for a group of people to have definite choice if conflicting opinions exist.

[andretimpa]

Here is my full feedback on the event

About the competition itself

• I think we need more rewards to keep people in teams that are not doing well motivated until the end of the competition. My suggestion is that at the end of Brawl, the best Brawlers on each role be recognized and rewarded (either by voting or by the Expert panel. This would be similar to the sportsmanship award in War). This could serve as a motivation to go on, even if your team starts becoming inactive in the end and is also a recognition to people that didn't ended up in the winning team. Another nice addition, but not as important, would be icons for people that got maximum bids.
• If you guys want to keep elemental affiliations (which I'm against), at least make it so that anyone that wants to be a boss needs to submit an application (masters included). My main reasoning here is that Trials has nothing to do with what is required in Brawl. Masters that want to be bosses will apply anyway and I think it would encourage other members to give it a shot.
• Arth suggested more complex challenges and I think those would be great. However, challenges were really unpopular compared to wagers. My opinion is that this happened mainly because it meant you had to do extra work and sometimes you don't have the time for that (I was planning on challenging fire in the last round, but I thought in the end that it would be better to focus on my main submission and guarantee my wager points, so I never sent the challenge). I don't know what is the best way for fixing this.
• As wagers are used mostly in the "end game" of Brawl, it doesn't make as much sense to issue wagers that are not for maximum points, unless you are trying to bait an opponent that wouldn't risk loosing many points. So I think you guys should just use a fixed amount of points, instead of a varying one
• A more diverse expert panel is needed, so they can make more informed decisions. Ideally, these experts should be recruited by the Brawlmasters, with applications being taken for any missing spots.
• Don't change rules in the middle of a round. The whole thing with declined wagers and challenges in round 5 was pretty confusing.
• Also, notify the participants when a wager is accepted. I only knew Laxa had accepted my wager when I read about it in the Round 6 description.

About voting and the incident in the last round

Spoiler for gdoc with some stats about the different rounds:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Am_Yqli4GaJ8dGpTS1JkVm50LTgxR2ZBQXJ0NWZDblE#gid=0

I've compiled some stats about the overall behaviour of voters during Brawl. Some of these are estimates, based on the following suppositions (that are not 100% true, but that help us see the bigger picture)

• Every Brawler voted in all roles (if there are less votes than Brawlers, then I assume that only Brawlers voted)
• Every non-brawler voting used both their votes

What can be seen is that Round 1 was really popular, with the highest amount of voters. The order in which the submissions appeared seems to affect the amount of votes (as some people had suggested), with Artists getting systematically more votes and Off-Topickers and Writers getting the least votes (specially from non-brawlers). The advertising in the Forum news did increase the interest of the rest of the community, but nothing close to the votes received in Round 1.

In round 6, there were some atypical things. Firstly, the amount of brawlers using both their votes was higher, than during the rest of the Brawl and if we compare roles that had no wagers (artist, FE and writer, as got an autowin) and roles that had wagers (combo, because of the DB part, CD and OT) we get 8.67 brawlers vs 14.33 brawlers, which probably indicates that there was some strategic voting.
Secondly, round 6 was as popular as round 1. This can either mean that the community had its interest renewed or that there were sockpuppets voting.
Neither of these explain the bizarre last minute changes of votes, as they make no sense at all, strategically speaking (maybe this can be the work of some troll trying to ruin the event, I don't know)

An idea that appeared during the discussion here are votes via PMs.

pros:

• You can enforce a rule like "people have at most 1 day to change their votes and can't change their votes at all, if they voted in the last 2 days of the voting", which would have prevented the trainwreck that was the voting this last round.
• You can enforce any criteria that you want to prevent sockpuppets (alternate accounts), be it a minimum post count, or having being in the forum for at least n months
• There is a psychological pressure against cheating when you are sending something with your forum name in it.
• It allows for a voting system based in ranking submissions or grading and you can prevent people from voting in their own teams, giving more flexibility to fix the voting system

cons:

• We are substituting something automated by something done manually, which means, errors will occur, things will need to be triple checked and the added workload would probably require a third Brawlmaster.
• This means that the results will take longer to be known.

Alternatively, if the admins can implement all those things in the forum (polls, with a time limit for changes, minimum post count, minimum registration date, ranking and grading, not being able to vote on some options), we could just use these (maybe the system that Drake is suggesting is enough).

My suggestions for the voting system, together with my reasoning

• Every member of a Brawl team can only vote for their own role. They cannot vote on themselves and must rank the submissions of their opponents. This solves at the same time the problem of uninformed voting (I'm assuming that Brawlers have an understanding about their role that is sufficient for them to be decent judges) and the vote tax problem (you no longer need to use a vote on your team if you can't vote on your team). This also doesn't penalize the members of a team with inactive members (that would be missing the "free" votes the inactive ones could give). I feel that having to either miss submissions or doing submissions for other roles is enough "punishment" for inactivity in a team.
• Community members would ideally vote by ranking their submissions. Some way of preventing sockpuppets would be crucial, as every member would have a huge voting power in this system (maybe votes could also be weighted between teams/community/experts?)
• I know almost everyone is saying it, but please, separate the voting and point awarding in combo tasks.
• Strategic voting is an issue only when the stakes are high, or when it is clear that a team has a good lead. This is a problem mainly with wagers, so I suggest that wagers and challenges don't be publicaly revealed until the end of the round they took place (or only something like "There are 4 wagers taking place during this round")
• Finally, a crazy idea that Arth suggested and that I support is not telling anyone the results until the last minute. Not only does it prevent strategic voting, but it reduces demotivation from being in a team that is not doing well, specially towards the end. The only cost is the sanity of the participants.

[OldTrees]

Just thinking about it...

Team Voting

Spoiler for Hidden:

• Perhaps Brawlmasters can get access to assigning people to team-based membergroups.
• Members of the teams cannot submit votes in the standard polls
• Team as a while must rank the submissions for each tasks ASIDE FROM THEIR OWN.
• This may be handled by a Boss submitting the teams choices via Forum Post in the Voting thread or sending a PM to Brawlmasters.
• Perhaps teams get additional points for voting for the first place team in a round.
• As participants, I am assuming that they will judge more on how it effectively accomplishes the task as opposed to its appearance since they are subjected to the same standard.

I still see the possibility of competitive bias (aka not ranking your closest competitor fairly). However if we assume honest voters* then there are no problems with this system.
*Aka my assumption of all brawlers

Here is my full feedback on the event

If Fire had not been in the lead, I would have challenged. Challenges are fun and are a great way to demonstrate skill.
The challenge I was hoping to request was: "Each brawler redesigns any card the other has made. The greatest improvement is the winner."

My suggestions for the voting system, together with my reasoning

• Every member of a Brawl team can only vote for their own role. They cannot vote on themselves and must rank the submissions of their opponents. This solves at the same time the problem of uninformed voting (I'm assuming that Brawlers have an understanding about their role that is sufficient for them to be decent judges) and the vote tax problem (you no longer need to use a vote on your team if you can't vote on your team). This also doesn't penalize the members of a team with inactive members (that would be missing the "free" votes the inactive ones could give). I feel that having to either miss submissions or doing submissions for other roles is enough "punishment" for inactivity in a team.

Another nice system.

[Drake_XIV]

Just thinking about it...

Team Voting

Spoiler for Hidden:

• Perhaps Brawlmasters can get access to assigning people to team-based membergroups.
• Members of the teams cannot submit votes in the standard polls
• Team as a while must rank the submissions for each tasks ASIDE FROM THEIR OWN.
• This may be handled by a Boss submitting the teams choices via Forum Post in the Voting thread or sending a PM to Brawlmasters.
• Perhaps teams get additional points for voting for the first place team in a round.
• As participants, I am assuming that they will judge more on how it effectively accomplishes the task as opposed to its appearance since they are subjected to the same standard.

I still see the possibility of competitive bias (aka not ranking your closest competitor fairly). However if we assume honest voters* then there are no problems with this system.
*Aka my assumption of all brawlers

I trust that members of a team can vouch for the honesty of their teammates with this system.

[Marsu]

On a different note: Pay even more attention to clarification of your challenges. I personally liked most of them, but with some, trouble was just obvious.
Example: 'Write a song'. This simply is a challenge that shouldn't exist - it should either be 'Write a song. You may not provide anything but lyrics.' or 'Write and record a song'.
Also, less Combo Tasks. They are basically impossible to objectively vote for and a lot of additional work for participants. Don't get me wrong, a few Combo Task really give Brawl a more epic feeling, but limit it to about three per team per Brawl.

[Naesala]

Good news everyone!

Chap and I should be speaking sunday. I have just gone through this thread and listed EVERY request from the community about brawl. We shall discuss every single comment here and determine how we feel about it, as well as our own ideas.

Additionally, we're already working to create a much, much better voting system for this and other competitions in the future.

Thanks again to all participants. Any last-minute advice or requests would be welcome. Keep your eyes out for the "What to expect in Brawl #3" Thread coming soon!

[andretimpa]

One last idea, about how Brawl and Guilds could work together. Instead of giving GP based on the results of Brawl, award GP for participation on Brawl (like 1 GP per member that voted. They would not be required to vote in everything). I don't know how this could be best implemented. It might solve guild bias, which is something OT pointed that might happen and would increase the participation of the community (it might increase uninformed voting though).