Narrow Tier BB - 2012

[Warpstone]

Martin,

Re: Amazon Catchers
+1 for free diving catch. It's a useful fringe skill.

If you can develop a passer on an AG3 team to min-max the bonus DC+catch starting catcher... well, Nuffle bless you, but it won't particularly worry me.

Re: Stunties

I actually agree with Thadrin re: Gobbos and 'Fling buffs being needed, but that you're going down the wrong road.

I don't think you ever want to see AG4 Stunty out of the box. I'd start by giving 'Flings Thick Skull as a start (supported by fluff too) and possibly a weak positional or more inducement love.

Also, does another big guy really help Gobbos? Maybe I'm still scarred from playing 50+ games with a Chaos Pact team, but do you want to add even more unpredictability to that roster? I'd rather see the gobo pogo become a bonofide 0-2 positional, etc. Basically, you don't need more power, but rather a few more reliable pieces that provide a more straightforward risk/reward proposition.

As a general principle I don't think you want to necessarily gift more abilities to stunties, so much as minimize some risks (i.e. NO to MA6 Snots, but yes to titchy nullifying tackle).

Re: Khemri changes
Garion's criticism of BT Tom Guardians is... over the top . I played LRB5 Khemri on MBBL in season 6 or so. My opponents were great coaches, but it was too easy to win the league with Khemri. If I could pick up the ball twice a game, I would be hard pressed to do anything besides win AND kill several opposing players.
When the roster got converted to 4518 BT with no MB, things changed dramatically. The movement was nice, but it was no longer a case of simply coaching by the numbers. I now had to work my butt off to position TGs and advance cages. It was significantly harder to both win AND kill at the same time, and this was a very good thing.

Using break tackle meant:
1) this TG had to blitz if he also wanted to hit
2) I had plays I could make besides simply bashing away in a scrum
3) my TGs were vulnerable to self-inflicted attrition via blown AG rolls and lower AV.

Break tackling, AV8 Tomb Guardians are the answer to various Khemri problems. They inject tactical nuance into an otherwise over-powered (LRB5) or dull (LRB6) roster. I'm glad Khemri were nerfed, but the current Decay roster is uninspired and frankly missed a great opportunity to create more meaningful risk/reward decisions for both Khemri coaches and their opponents.

Re: LRB4 PiOn
Yes. KISS applies.

Re: Sneaky git = to the KO box on a foul.

I really wonder what this is like at high-TV. Low to mid-TV it's probably great. But as a spam skill in a perpetual league like ours (i.e. senior division with teams that have at least 10 games under their belt), I think it could become corrosive as well as unbalanced. I'm all for fouling (and even CPOMB), but just not for cynical abuse of the rules--this may still be a bit to open to that problem. If you could add some limiter (i.e. only 1 sneaky git can return from the KO box per drive), then I'd be all for it as a great change.

BTW, Doubleskulls, I don't know how much stock we can put into either yours or Martin's claims about what players want. Gamers are not exactly known for commitment or predictability. I've always found that committed stunty players are a bit like goalies. Everybody appreciates them, but can't understand why the hell someone would pursue such a demoralizing specialty.

Still, I don't think there needs to a lot of controversy about narrowing the tiers. Even some of Martin's more drastic changes would still leave plenty of challenges for a great stunty coach. I think the real point is to reduce the amount of rules "cruft" that makes stunty players wonder why they're kicking themselves in the nuts every game. Losing because you tried and failed is palatable, but losing because there was absolutely nothing you could reasonably do is just masochism. Giving weaker teams more strategic options isn't going to reduce the competitive integrity of the game.

[DoubleSkulls]

The numbers are here - http://naf.talkfantasyfootball.org/lrb6.html and I should be clear I'm particularly talking about tournaments because league play is whole different kettle of fish. In tournament play there is a pretty good relationship between popularity and teams that get .500 or over. However once you drop below .500 there is a very weak relationship.

Chaos Pact, High Elves, Khemri, Vampire and Underworld are all .450 or above, and all of them are less popular than Goblins on .312 or Halflings on .346 or Humans on .442. Orcs on .477 are the most popular team, with nearly 20% more games than 2nd place (Undead who top the rankings) - which I think reinforces my point that a large chunk of people don't choose teams because of how good they are and basically they don't really care. However I think Orcs are bit of an oddity due to the fluff factor so I'm happy to ignore them, just in the same way I don't really try and emphasise humans either.

I do agree getting the under performing tier 1 teams up to .500 will improve their popularity and achieve the goal of making the racial selection more diverse. Similarly reducing the power of the best tier 1 teams should encourage competitive coaches to try a greater variety of races - but they'll still stick to the "over .500" races since they are competitive. On the current numbers that's about 75% of coaches. A chunk of the other 25% will get pulled into the "over .500" bracket because they just like the team that has now got better and will play it regardless of win%. Redistributing that 75~80% is a good idea and I heartily welcome it.

But why would you expect that 80% of coaches to suddenly start playing .450 teams when they don't today? So long as they are below .500 then they just don't appeal to coaches who want to play with the best teams - which is the majority. Sure people might say they will... but they don't now so I just don't believe they will.

The work dode has done in league play basically shows that the diversity is pretty well balanced now at low TVs, and its only at higher TVs that diversity suffers. Interestingly though the correlation between popularity and win% is weaker than that between both toughness and lethality - indicating people just don't play squishy teams long term even though Elves of all kinds do very well. Tweaking win% there will have little impact on diversity, and we need to look at addressing root causes for popularity (which is probably overly focussed on CLPOMB).

[legowarrior]

Just curious, how many tournaments give out special awards for playing a stunty team?

[plasmoid]

Hi guys,
once again thanks for chiming in.

Legowarrior said:

Either way, I like the idea of big gains, big loss myself!

Quite the opposite for me. I think such skills too easily lead to imbalance in the game.

But hey, I like your handicap system. I've been using it unwittingly for several years
A more serious non-roster-specific handicap system could be to add to your league rules: For each season won, a coach adds +5TV to any and all future teams he plays. It's not really self-limiting if it is in your league rules

Garion said:

I will play flings and are we playing another team as well or just one each next time?

Depends on the number of coaches - but just like the first time around I'll be using 2 groups, and a maximum of 2 teams pr. coach.

BTW feel free to let me know if you think my changes to flings would put them above the 50% mark. If so 0-4 catchers might be more prudent than 0-6. But to my mind, they're still a team with a ton of flaws!

Speaking of those halflings...

The change to PO and the Tackle doesnt work against dodge for right stuff players (i personally dont like this one, but thats niether here nor there). So do the stunty teams need any more buffs than that if the tiers are just being narrowed? Or is the aim to get them mid or top tier 2?

OK, you haven't noticed, but as a compromise I've switched the Right-Stuff ability to Titchy, meaning it only applies to snotlings. Gobbos and Halflings have been given other toys to compensate

As for the aim, I'm hoping to push the überteams down into the top half of tier 1. And I'm hoping to push the tier 2/3 teams into the bottom half of tier 1 or the top of tier 2 (Preferably around the 45% mark). So, what I essentially mean by narrowing the tiers is a tier 3 (around 45%), a tier 2 (around 50%) and a tier 1 (around 55% - not above).

Cheers
Martin

[Warpstone]

Ian, I see your point. There will never be a smoking gun here though. You can say it's uncorrelated after tier 1, but I can also make a case that there have been very few attempts to foster "emergent strategies" in stunty play, hence their potential broader appeal remains untapped (just like all the other rosters that aren't the most popular). There are always micro-fads in team selection as people see club mates or outsiders try something new and succeed (i.e. LRB6 Necro).

The difference though, is you'll never see this with stunties until the attitude that "they don't just have to be bad, they have to suck" is changed. Slaan and Underworld are every bit as prone to tournament misery, but the mere novelty of a new playstyle means they at least get experimented with. Most stunty fixes seem to be vetoed quickly due to concern about granting an easily abused low-TV tactic, meanwhile the nigh unstoppable (and tournament friendly) early Slaan 2-turner TD seems to be considered kosher.

There are plenty of rosters that are unsuitable for perpetual play that have been rigged for low-TV/tournament suitability (norse, amazon). Why not make the joke teams more suitable for this environment and reap similar popularity? Besides, if we're also nerfing the good low-TV teams in the process, aren't we mitigating the standard deviation between winner and losers? It creates a broader middle-ground to foster approaches that don't all boil down to "route-one" power builds.

[plasmoid]

Hi Warpstone,
thanks for putting down your 0.02$
I hope that in 7 months from now your kid (or is it the missus ) will let your return to some pbem BB for playtest tournament 2

Anyway,
I'm happy to see you're on board with LRB4 PiOn and DC Amazon catchers. It feels like the right way to go.

Regarding the new SG, I know it needs some playtesting, but so far I'm not overly worried. As stated before, I think the big deal is that your player still goes off the pitch. A big fouling strategy is hard to maintain when your players go off the pitch. We also have to put a bit of blood back in after I've finally decided to go with the weakest possible version of PiOn. And then there's the fact that SG-fouling doesn't combine very well with the 2-1 grind, which, to my mind, is the playstyle where hardcore fouling traditionally will be most useful.

As for the stunties I'm sorry that we disagree somewhat, but let me at least explain where I'm coming from
Ogres first - simply put, if the are to be fixed without adding ogres, snots have to get a serious polish. Even with 6136 they're hardly stellar. But I'm getting very positive feedback from the ogre playtest coach, so I'm good with that.

As for gobbos, you're right, the 3rd troll isn't all that. 3 trolls can lead to a lot of mishaps. Playtest still has them struggling. For gobbos though, I'm not sure adding stability is really 'in character'. If there was ever a crazy team, it's the gobbo team. The reason I like the 3rd troll actually is partly the extra gobbo-protection it adds (both on the LOS and as an on-pitch screen), and partly the increased availability of TTM.

And then there is the halfling team. This has been the hardest team of all to come up with. You may remember the brainstorm thread(s) around 2(?) years ago. Some halfling positionals were suggested, but it was always the same thing, unless given completely ridiculous über-stats, can it truly help a halfling team. I mean, adding a handful of mediocre yet squishy players is hardly a big boost. So we tried the Dryads, and they were unpopular. Then the extra Chef, and it too wasn't too popular. And then it dawned on me: The only halfling positional that could ever make a real difference would be an AG4 one. Not to mention it fits the fluff. And nice as they are, they're still supremely breakable, slow and weak. So I can't wait to start testing these guys!

Cheers
Martin

[koadah]

But why would you expect that 80% of coaches to suddenly start playing .450 teams when they don't today? So long as they are below .500 then they just don't appeal to coaches who want to play with the best teams - which is the majority. Sure people might say they will... but they don't now so I just don't believe they will.

Why do you say 80% I'm only saying more. even if it is only one more (me) that is still more.

As I said earlier in swiss tournaments you chances of winning increase as you get towards your 5th or 6th game.

But I am also thinking of leagues and online play where you are digging in for the long term and will probably have to play some tackle-POMBers.

Because people don't use a team when the team is weak you are assuming that none of then would use it if it were stronger? OK, fair enough. I think we can call this one closed.

[dode74]

Because people don't use a team when the team is weak you are assuming that none of then would use it if it were stronger?

Why are you assuming that is the reason the team isn't used?

[koadah]

Because people don't use a team when the team is weak you are assuming that none of then would use it if it were stronger?

Why are you assuming that is the reason the team isn't used?

Because if you have 100 people you will have a lot of different reasons and I would expect that would be the reason for some of them.

If I am one then one is obviously not zero.

[dode74]

For T1-1.5 teams that correlation is weak at best. For T2-3 teams it is stronger. So yes, making the T2-3 teams stronger may well adjust their popularity, but only to a degree.

[koadah]

For T1-1.5 teams that correlation is weak at best. For T2-3 teams it is stronger. So yes, making the T2-3 teams stronger may well adjust their popularity, but only to a degree.

I like that wording. I'd vote for that one.

Ian?

[plasmoid]

Hi guys,

I like that wording. I'd vote for that one.

Me too. Or to put it differently:

If I am one then one is obviously not zero.

And I'm another one, so that's two.

I think reaching a conclusion like, power means nothing is too simplistic. Even when there is no obvious corelation. More likely there are too many factors, drowning out or obscuring the effect of just the one. But dial up any one factor and you'll see a result. Maybe not as much as expected, but something.

Doubleskulls said:

I should be clear I'm particularly talking about tournaments because league play is whole different kettle of fish.

Indeed it is. Resurrection rules (i.e. 'not having to live with the consequences') changes team selection quite a bit.
I also think (percieved) powerteams get taken more in tournaments, because for some at least it's about the glory and the prizes.
At the other end of the scale, those less competitive souls can have a go at some of the weak teams that don't much appeal for league play. Most people can sit through 2 days of mostly losses provided there is enough beer. Taking a losing team to a 6 or 12 month season is another story!

In league play, I agree that a powerbump will not magically make them totally equal. But pushing them into the 'ambiguous power' zone means that more coaches can get tempted by them - tempted by the allure of 'I just might surprise everyone with these'. After all, in league play, last season's winner is unlikely to take Woodies or Dwalfs - he'd get boooh'd for that - so team choices ebb and flow. And as Warpstone rightly pointed out, if we at the same time make it less obvious which teams are the power teams (by knocking down the top 5) team selection could get even more blurred.

But, as stated a bit earlier, I'd like to bump the bottom teams to 45%. I don't know if you'd call that eliminating the tiers. But I'd call it narrowing them (súbstantially). I originally called these rules 1-tier BB. Then faced a shitstorm of people saying that all teams shouldn't be totally equal. As I agree with that sentiment, I changed the name into something less likely to be misunderstood. But I'm not just making the tiers narrower individually, I'm also narrowing the gap between the tiers.

Cheers
Martin

[DoubleSkulls]

Doubleskulls said:

I should be clear I'm particularly talking about tournaments because league play is whole different kettle of fish.

Indeed it is. Resurrection rules (i.e. 'not having to live with the consequences') changes team selection quite a bit.
I also think (percieved) powerteams get taken more in tournaments, because for some at least it's about the glory and the prizes.
At the other end of the scale, those less competitive souls can have a go at some of the weak teams that don't much appeal for league play. Most people can sit through 2 days of mostly losses provided there is enough beer. Taking a losing team to a 6 or 12 month season is another story!

So we agree.... in the format of the game were win% is the most significant people aren't going to take tier2/3 because you make the win% a bit better. So in formats where people value win% less the impact of a win% change will be even smaller

[DoubleSkulls]

I'd like to bump the bottom teams to 45%. I don't know if you'd call that eliminating the tiers. But I'd call it narrowing them (súbstantially). I originally called these rules 1-tier BB. Then faced a shitstorm of people saying that all teams shouldn't be totally equal. As I agree with that sentiment, I changed the name into something less likely to be misunderstood. But I'm not just making the tiers narrower individually, I'm also narrowing the gap between the tiers.

To my mind you are pretty much saying you want to eliminate tiers. That gap is too narrow to effect normal league play (luck and coaching skill being much bigger factors) and you've basically removed one of the primary purposes of tier 3 - which is to give experienced coaches a real challenge against less capable opponents.

I'm happy to accept that the win% for the tier 3s in FUMBBL black box today seems a bit lower than we'd aimed for (targeting .300 but they are all below that) and that tournament stats narrow the win% due to the near-universal Swiss format, so a small buff may be in order, but I'd be looking for a .300 to .350 range for tier 3.

[Tourach]

.... you've basically removed one of the primary purposes of tier 3 - which is to give experienced coaches a real challenge against less capable opponents.

I don't think there is any challenge, if you opponent isn't retarded you will not win if the dices are fair.