War - Feedback

[coinich]

For War #3:

Alright, here's my old idea for determining opponents.  Break the thing down into Tier systems of four teams each, based off of vault size from smallest to greatest.  If we include Underworld Tier 2 would contain 5 teams.  The main point of this is to determine who plays who.  Here's a table to show the percentage of chance a Tier team would have playing another.  If this is a bit bulky to produce I could probably write a small program to determine who plays who with the probability properly adjusted.  Once teams start being eliminated, the Tiers equally shrink, but if there is an odd number Tier 2 and then Tier 3 get the extra teams in that order.  Once the number of remaining teams is four or less simply discard the Tier system.  Hopefully this will prevent things such as in this war with Team Life facing Team Entropy 3 times a round when one team has a clear advantage.

The table reads across, so Tier 2 has a 25% chance of playing Tier 3.

	Tier 1	Tier 2	Tier 3
Tier 1	60%	25%	15%
Tier 2	25%	50%	25%
Tier 3	15%	25%	60%

[QuantumT]

If it's at all possible, I think we need to find a way to spread suicide decks around. A single team receiving a whole bunch has a similar problem to the byes in last round, except here it's worse because it's done intentionally.

Perhaps a team has to declare how many suicide's they'll be forced to make and those people just aren't used in the pairings.

[Malduk]

If it's at all possible, I think we need to find a way to spread suicide decks around. A single team receiving a whole bunch has a similar problem to the byes in last round, except here it's worse because it's done intentionally.

Perhaps a team has to declare how many suicide's they'll be forced to make and those people just aren't used in the pairings.

How about making a set of rules that will actually prevent suicide decks instead of making bunch of additional rules around those, just for the vague idea that "vaults have been poorly done and it should be punished"?
Its the mechanic of the event that makes suicide decks, not Vault building.
Here we have Earth, that did pretty epic job in first war, with practically same people in there, Light, which also made a great show in first war, also with same leadership, and Time, again with same leadership, making suicide decks. Either those people got brain damaged somehow between the wars, or indeed its not the Vault that takes the main blame here.
I'm generally happy with our Vault, but if some games played out differently, I wouldnt be surprised if we had to make these decks ourselves.

As for your "hotfix", its impossible. No one makes suicide deck until they see their pairings and start building decks.

[QuantumT]

How about making a set of rules that will actually prevent suicide decks instead of making bunch of additional rules around those, just for the vague idea that "vaults have been poorly done and it should be punished"?
Its the mechanic of the event that makes suicide decks, not Vault building.
Here we have Earth, that did pretty epic job in first war, with practically same people in there, Light, which also made a great show in first war, also with same leadership, and Time, again with same leadership, making suicide decks. Either those people got brain damaged somehow between the wars, or indeed its not the Vault that takes the main blame here.
I'm generally happy with our Vault, but if some games played out differently, I wouldnt be surprised if we had to make these decks ourselves.

There will always be things like suicide decks unless you allow for unlimited conversion, because it will always be most advantageous to be right at the point where you can barely make the legal decks, because that's the most advantageous way to be.

As for your "hotfix", its impossible. No one makes suicide deck until they see their pairings and start building decks.

It doesn't seem so hard to me. You check how many on element cards they had at the beginning, see how many they lost that round, and make the pairings accordingly.

Another possibility is that you can't suicide against the same team multiple times unless you have no other choice.

[Malduk]

If you are willing to look at the elements cards (which we did in the first war and what you were against in that other thread where we basically discussed the very same issue) to determine how many games team can play, then why not just look at the element cards and determine how many games team can play? Fun sentence, right?
In other words, seed only so many names that team can field LEGAL decks for. Just like we did in the first war. Put rules on discarding/converting instead, so you dont get discards of main element cards, and voila - no illegal decks. The only "suicide" decks from that point would be huge decks that hurt deckbuilding of other decks.

There is absolutely NOTHING good about 1) forcing illegal decks, and then 2) telling teams who they can and who they cannot suicide against.

[QuantumT]

If you are willing to look at the elements cards (which we did in the first war and what you were against in that other thread where we basically discussed the very same issue) to determine how many games team can play, then why not just look at the element cards and determine how many games team can play? Fun sentence, right?
In other words, seed only so many names that team can field LEGAL decks for. Just like we did in the first war. Put rules on discarding/converting instead, so you dont get discards of main element cards, and voila - no illegal decks. The only "suicide" decks from that point would be huge decks that hurt deckbuilding of other decks.

Like I told you in the other thread, those rules are horribly abusable. I just get rid of all of my on-element cards down to 29, then with those and the remaining off-element cards, I just stall forever. Starting with 240 of each, I lose all of the off-element cards in 3 rounds, and have 264 cards left. With those cards, I just build decks such that I can convert any on element losses back into the deck, which can be done for another 8 rounds at least. So I've now managed to last for 11 rounds, and I never won a single match.

If you make rules about what I can discard, you only slow the process down a little bit, until you get to the point where I have no choice about what I discard (which is generally where you would start to get limited in your own elements cards anyway). To avoid this, you would also have to add rules about what decks I was allowed to field in the first place, which doesn't sound at all desirable.

There is absolutely NOTHING good about 1) forcing illegal decks, and then 2) telling teams who they can and who they cannot suicide against.

1) Like I said, unless conversion becomes completely unlimited, there will always be suicide decks.

2) You don't think that it's just a tad unfair that out of the 5 suicides so far this war, death has received 4 of them?

[Daxx]

To be fair, how can you mandate who a team does or does not suicide against? Because that sounds like a recipe for disaster. If the other teams chose to suicide against Team Death, then they chose to do that - how can you possibly fairly say "you can't suicide against this team because other teams are doing it". Plus, having seen that other people have suicided against them, they may well choose not to in future.

[QuantumT]

To be fair, how can you mandate who a team does or does not suicide against? Because that sounds like a recipe for disaster. If the other teams chose to suicide against Team Death, then they chose to do that - how can you possibly fairly say "you can't suicide against this team because other teams are doing it". Plus, having seen that other people have suicided against them, they may well choose not to in future.

What wrong with saying that a team can't suicide against the same opponent multiple times? IE, maybe time can suicide against death and earth can suicide against death, but earth can't suicide against death 3 times.

My other suggestion is that you just remove the suicides from the pairings entirely. Like if I had could have seen from earth's number of earth cards that they would be forced to suicide 3 times, I just give earth 3 fewer matchups and tell them to discard 90 cards + whatever the penalty for 3 suicides is.

When you allow teams to choose, you've set up something that's likely to be unfair to some teams. Take air for example. Because most of our members are relatively unknown, it's fairly unlikely that anyone will give us the gift of free wins. It makes who receives the suicides into a potential popularity contest.

[TimerClock14]

rather than randomizing the whole list of players, why not just (proly for just the first 2-3 rounds) pair teams together and have each ranking member fight the other? IE: General vs. General

[MrBlonde]

My other suggestion is that you just remove the suicides from the pairings entirely. Like if I had could have seen from earth's number of earth cards that they would be forced to suicide 3 times, I just give earth 3 fewer matchups and tell them to discard 90 cards + whatever the penalty for 3 suicides is.

Problem with that is that i don't think you can automatically tell if a team will necessarily suicide or not. Earth didn't have to suicide 4 times but they CHOSE to this round. They also chose to suicide against teams they probably thought they had the lowest win percentage against. Also due to suicides being viable by all teams earth could have made a legal suicide deck (with no pillars) in the hopes of the other team making an illegal/suicide deck.

This would also slow down the whole process in making pairings.

When you allow teams to choose, you've set up something that's likely to be unfair to some teams. Take air for example. Because most of our members are relatively unknown, it's fairly unlikely that anyone will give us the gift of free wins. It makes who receives the suicides into a potential popularity contest.

I don't think teams suicide depending on whether they "like" a certain team or not. The choose it depending on whether or not they have a better chance of winning vs certain teams. No way do i believe that Xinef and Terro chose to suicide against team Death due to popularity.

For this round Earth just chose to suicide against the #3 team and the #2 team. Nothing really seems shady about that.

[lava golem]

I think this has been stated already, but is there going to be an award icon for people who go undefeated through the whole war?

[Xinef]

No way do i believe that Xinef and Terro chose to suicide against team Death due to popularity.

My logic was really simple - last round I gave the suicide deck to the missing person, since otherwise we would have to substitute and winning would be less worthy.

If anyone is interested, this round we didn't need to field any suicide decks. Maybe making one would allow us to make the other decks stronger, but we decided that since we can make 7 playable decks, we'd do so.