sooner or later someone will show up with a bad clone...

[Marcus]

One thing that an online client could do, which I'm sure noone would even consider in a large tournament, is to keep track of a whole range of statistics such as time used per turn, number of blocks compared to what skills the player has, average pass-length for the players, success rates for various rolls, probability of reroll use etc etc. This in itself could aid in finding things that need to be changed.

It's been done. It's called the Online Blood Bowl League. It's been running for years. Rather than honing the rules to something interesting it's now become a weird cross-patched and house-ruled version of 3rd edition that bears little resemblance to BB and DZ rulebooks.

It's also unfortunately lost all its good coaches and is now a haven for complete muppets.

[christer]

Oh? OLBBL collects balance statistics? Since when?

Or did you just quote the wrong part of the message?
I'm fully aware of the OLBBL. Used to play there for a while, but got bored of it. As you said, way too many house rules and oddities for me to enjoy it.

-- Christer

[martynq]

Martyn has trouble playing elves ... (sorry Martyn had to dig him as he's currently burying the halflings)

I don't think this is a function of BB2k1 at all or any other version of the game. The dice always behave very strangely when I'm playing. If you look at a lot of MBBL/MBBL2 matches this season, I've lost several close matches where if I'd rolled a 1 on one particular roll 2+ roll near the end of the match. This run of partially poor luck then seems to collect up until I hit a match where the luck flows consistently in my direction (as happened in my high elf team's match against Robert's Shallya team, and may perhaps be happening in the match against the halflings - certainly you've had a bit of poor luck at times... the last few turns of the first half, for example).

Cheers,
Martyn

[GalakStarscraper]

I KNOW I shouldn't even try but I cannot resist.

Galak, you are missing some realy important factors here:
Player Trades
Star Players
Allied Players
Secret Weapons
Magic items

I think the living rulebook is really really good as far as the "play Blood Bowl rules" are.

If it comes down to the team lists, the basic units (players) are balanced.

Okay so the base LRB game is fine ... not sure that I've seen you ever suggest that.

Availiability of secret Weapons is really limited
Star Players are almost banned
Allied Players are not existent
Player Trades are imposible
Buying Magic Items or equipment for players is impossible

Things I know from paying attention when the BBRC talks:
Secret Weapon rules for all teams are coming from the BBRC soon.
Star Players are FINE as they are. Freebooting them is where they should have been all along and they are STILL showing up in critical games in normal leagues which is where they should be instead of day to day.
Allied Player rules are coming from the BBRC soon.
Player Trades should never be allowed. If you want a completely broken online gaming community then allow player trades.
Buying Magic Items rules are coming from the BBRC soon.

The there are topics like "One Turn Scoring"
I mean, you have no idea man (no offence
If the online game wasnt absolutely waterproove to hacks and balancing abuse, you will have 500 Skaven Teams with 4 One Turn Scoring Gutter Runners in 5 Minutes after booting the server.

Toby on this note .... you are just wrong. One turn scoring has existed for years. I've failed to see Skaven teams overrunning Blood Bowl. I would gladly bet ANY sum on money you want to name and can match ANY day of the week (I've got 1000 USD I'll put in PayPal if BB ever is announced to go online on this bet ... very serious here) that if BB ever became an online game that NO single race would occupy the top 10 teams within a few months. Your comments make it sound like BB has been played by about a dozen folks for a month.

You think just because I don't online game that makes me some village idiot .... from your "you have no idea man". When you show me a single long term BB league dominated by a single race I'll give you your due. But you cannot even find a recent BB tournament where the top 3 teams were the same race. IF 500 Skaven teams showed up within 5 minutes with one turn GR ... I could care less as 1) the Skaven teams will still lose as much as ever and 2) if the GR does most of the scoring he'll age into obvilion quickly.

So there it is Toby. IF you can show me one shred of REAL evidence to support your claims I'll give you the time of day. But the bottom line is that you have only your beliefs which no one who plays the game on this board agrees with.

Now I need to go ... see I'm fine until someone tells me I'm clueless ... have to admit that gets to me especially based on the source.

Galak

Ah well .... voyagers ... my sincere apologies .... you were probably correct to lock the thread. If you want to relock it .... I promise to not touch it again.

[Marcus]

Galak:

Do
Not
Feed
The
Trolls



Marcus

[Toby]

Galak, you just dont get it and your attempt to try to make it seem like i attacked you bores me.

One Turn Scoring is just an EXAMPLE.
It would make sense for you to try to understand what your discussion-partner wants to get across. "You have no Idea" = you cant imagine.

I wanted to say: Galak, you cant imagine how bad cheats, hacks and abuses can affect a game, and how fast.
Im sorry to make an PC Game an Example, but anyone whos playing counterstrike will tell you that cheating and hacks almost killed the game.

Also note "no offence" and . I cant be more "political correct, and i dont want to. You say you dont play online, so as a matter of fact, you have no idea (of cheating). Period. If you dont like me read Christers posting, he basically says the same thing (on abuse).

The next point.
There are features that could (should) be added to the game as soon as it is played by such a big audience - under the same ruleset. These features are not there yet, and it would be clever to think about them "with the possibilities of the internet in mind". Player trades and Allies would be an major attraction IF it was possible to balance.

Its nice to hear that someone thinks about such rules to add them to LRB, but right now there are no such rules.

Note that i would have written that private but it gets on my nerve and so i decided to make this public.

[GalakStarscraper]

Actually I can very easily imagine cheating on the online community (just because I don't play online doesn't mean running an electronic BB league doesn't give me plenty of insight into the area). The OLBBL and my own league have to deal with it on a weekly basis. There isn't a round of BB that goes by without we kicking players out of the league or issues penalties for PBeM cheating. All online gaming does is takes my problems to a power of 10 not difficult for me to image at all.

If the worry/complaint is that the game would have cheaters ... I agree that a worry .... its why I like tabletop btw .... lot more difficult to fudge the numbers.

However, your posts always make it sound like these are real issues with the existing board game. IE I've gone back and reread your post again and you make it sound like the rules are broken based on normally development. Cheating will destroy any game it touches .... always has ... always will.

Now it probably because English is not your first language, but your statements make it sound like BB is a house of cards on many occassions. If you entire post was mostly about cheating which I still don't read ... than you have my agreement .... oh and my apologies for boring you.

Galak

[Toby]

my approach always was "what if it was the task to design a online game"

nevermind. i quit. there are existing online games. so what.

[High & Mighty]

Availiability of secret Weapons is really limited
Star Players are almost banned
Allied Players are not existent
Player Trades are imposible
Buying Magic Items or equipment for players is impossible

If the online game wasnt absolutely waterproove to hacks and balancing abuse, you will have 500 Skaven Teams with 4 One Turn Scoring Gutter Runners in 5 Minutes after booting the server.

Regarding cheating, it's an issue for any on-line program much more than a board game because of the scale and distance and sophistication used. That's not an issue for game design, but of programming of the software. In a tabletop game, when your opponent goes to the bathroom, you cheat by peaking at his cards (when they existed), whereas in Starcraft, you run maphack software and you see the whole map you are playing on and what your oppenent is doing, making you omniscient. I think Starcraft fixed this issue with programming corrections and that issue IMO is neither here nor there. Doesn't mean bloodbowl was poorly designed because you could peak at their cards when they weren't looking. It means someone cheated. That's programming, not game design.

Regarding the issues you see as missing, there's no reason to think a successful on-line version of bloodbowl would not also incorporate the house rule atmosphere that surrounds it. All the football players in the world don't compete in one uber-league the world over. Some compete in professional national leagues. Some compete in world leagues. Some in local leagues. Some indoor. Some outdoor. Essentially the same game, but different "house rules" if you will apply.

Does the ball go out of bounds or bounce off the walls.
Do you get 7 or 11 players on the field?
Can you use stereroids or not?
Can you trade players among teams or are the teams set? I doubt you would see Germany trade their star player to Cameroon before the World Cup. People still seem to get a little exuberant about the game.

So for an on-line bloodbowl community, one could imagine various leagues running various experimental/house rules variatons. Same as PBEM leagues run now, simply in a different format. People who thought the same as you could play in those leagues and people who like different rules would play in different leagues with different rules. It's already established people like different things otherwise things like allies/star players/magic items/trades wouldn't be as discussed.

As for Skaven or some other unbalanced team running away with the show, I think your experience with Starcraft may actually make the issues murky for you. In Starcraft, you have three teams. Each with strengths weaknesses and none necessarily absolutely superior to the other two. In blood bowl with 15 teams, each still has its strengths and weaknesses. A skaven OTS will work sometimes and work more effectively against some teams more than others.

But unlike starcraft and its campaign format, Blood bowl is based on a league format with records. You just may not match up well against certain teams depending on what race you are and what skills you've chosen. That was a strategic decision you made when designing your team, but the goal is not to win everything, per se, but to get to and win the big dance. I'd hate to be an Amazon coach running in a majority Dwarf league, but in many other circumstances, they will probably do just fine. Doesn't make dwarves or amazons unbalanced, they just don't match up well against certain teams.

Starcraft is not built that way. In starcraft, each team at the beginning can be balanced against the others and how you build the team and the weapons you choose determine whether you match up well but from the gate, you don't have these match-up issues. That's what makes a game with 15 or 80 teams different from one with 3 designed as starcraft is.

Besides, as you've said, Starcraft enjoys popularity. Although there's no player trades allowed in it...

[McDeth]

I played tournament level quake for 3 years.
I played online bloodbowl extensively for 3 years
I've played tournament level boardgame bloodbowl for 3 years.

During my time playing tournament level quake I met a few nice people and a hell of a lot of complete and utter cheating, clueless, unsportsmanlike, rude obnoxious morons. I eventually quit.

During my time playing online bloodbowl I met a few nice people and a hell of a lot of complete and utter cheating, clueless, unsportsmanlike, rude obnoxious morons. I eventually quit.

During my time playing tournament level boardgame bloodbowl I've met almost exclusively skilled, intelligent, sporting, friendly and funny people. I don't plan to quit any time soon.

Marcus

What a post

This just about sums up what Blood Bowl is all about. like Marcus i've attempted to get involved in a few Online games and found it inhabited by obnoxious overbearing self righttouse ar******s. Whereas in the last 6 months of returning to Bloodbowl, i have found nothing but friendly and skilled people who i have enjoyed playing against.

Make sure BloodBowl does not need to go online to survive.

letys face it its been pretty much unsupported by GW for a while up until recently, and its as big as it ever was. Why spoil it by letting the idiots who abuse online play into the fold?

[Pantera]

Sadly, it's easy to be an ass when hiding behind the anonymity of the internet. Sounds like I havn't missed much when not playing online. I feel like I want to start up a new league with my friends again.

[Toby]

The "Online Gamers are fools and not nice people" argument stinks.

Listen, its not Random with whom you play. For example you could start playing the people from this board. You will have a large buddylist very soon and always find somone to play.

Other than Galak for example, i really like trash talk on b-net. Actually you can even get quite good at it Its part of Starcraft, like clanwars. It doesnt stop people from making friends. Actually you can't make friends with every single person on bnet - while you play board games mostly with your friends. When traveling to large tournaments that a played in a local network, you get to meet people in person and its like every othe occasion, some are nice and some are arrogant, some look stupid and some are. I mean where's the problem ?

[CyberHare]

When traveling to large tournaments that a played in a local network, you get to meet people in person and its like every othe occasion, some are nice and some are arrogant, some look stupid and some are. I mean where's the problem ?

I'm going to have to take issue with you here Toby. The people I've met at tournaments are some of the nicest most courtious people I've ever met. At the last Orion cup I had some of the most intense games I had ever played and everyone was polite, friendly and accomodating. This is just my own feeling but I think this is the kind of person who is attracted to Blood Bowl. Someone a little more mature and willing to put a little time and effort into someting they want to do.

I've played the online games, Starcraft, Tib Sun, etc and it's all about a quick fix. It's almost like a drug to some of them. If they haven't won in five minutes then your cheating and the biggest &^*&^! on the planet. It couldn't possibly be because the person they are playing has more skill than them.

I have a feeling you havn't been to many tournaments. If you have I appologize but I don't think you're speaking from experience.

On note of the original line of discussion of this thread. I'm of the general feeling that no one here will ever touch "Bloody Bowl" even if it does come out. Could it be said that there's a grass roots boycott of the game?
Just curious how everyone feels about that.

[DaFrenchCoach]

Hum... I missed the "hard discussion", I missed the "This board sucks !!" topic, but what I read here is enough.

There is definitely demmand for an "Online Blood Bowl"

What makes you think it ? The fact some students in programming make a game called bloody bowl ?

When Games Workshop is unable to engage, or, sell the lizence to someone capable of doing such a project...

Please don't hesitate, buy it, and make it better. What are your skills in programming online/offline games that allows you to give lessons like it (of course, every one here would have understood that alchemy product is the fisrt one ever made. PBem, and other tools are of course peanuts !!!)?

I wonder if any of you ever read about how big StarCraft is in Korea;
They Show SC Matches live on TV there, top players earn up to 50.000 € winning a tournament;

Yes. About 20 players earns enough to live with it. There is a french people with a manager who earns around 3000/4000 euros (same in USD), the top champion earns around 7000 euros (same in USD)... For 12 millions players. These guys play around 6/8 hours per day, and are really professionals. Are you one of this guy ? noooooooo...

And the most important question: HOW MANY PLAYERS PLAY BLOOD BOWL IN ORDER TO EARN MONEY If you should find ONE player on this international area (about 300 members), who would accept to play with your program 8 hours per days, never play blood bowl for fun (that's what the guys said), you would be a boss... Sorry, there's one: YOU. So now, we know the next online BB champion...

first of all i wasn't saying that alchemy has any right to steal GW IP.
However, my oppinion is their project is a "just cause" BECAUSE BB is such a great Game and BECAUSE Online would be soooo cool, so i think its courageous to say "if GW isn't doing it, then we are"

See my others remarks. Blood Bowl online community, if it exists hasn't wait for you as a messie in order to have some tools that allows players to play online. I can give you a lot of example of video games that work well without 3D graphics (Championship manager is one of my preferate).

My opinion is that Board games are by nature limited and inferior to pc games BUT a great board game is OF COURSE way better than a bad PC game, so BB would become even better.

Could you tell me why "BY NATURE" ? And could you tell me why you spent so many time to post on subject that has nothing to see with your perfect videos games ? You lost a lot of good times with it, baby !!!

The reason Gamers play Starcraft would apply to Blood Bowl as well (if it was EVEN BETTER balanced, and protected from hacks.) With the introduction of Player trades, another attraction that succeded Online would apply to Blood Bowl. Compare Player trades to Item Trades in diablo.

Balanced... You're kidding. I bought a year ago Diablo 2. The seller left me his account, whereas I was a newbie with online games and Diablo 2, I would have played with a real beardie player (a really, really strong barbarian)... Tell me where is the pleasure here.

so i was saing if you cant bring PC Gamers to to Blood Bowl, you have to bring Blood Bowl to the PC.

Where have you read the Blood Bowl community needs some of these guys ? I'd rather they don't come in Blood Bowl world with their Counterstrike behaviour !! Something like asking to a beer addict to appreciate french wine

So if you play to win - you dont know your opponent, you just play the game against some intelligence - you take advantage of everything possible.

Erk ... I also play in the same league beacause I have some friends in the corner !!!

Player Trades
Star Players
Allied Players
Secret Weapons
Magic items

Hey, you're talking about your house rules. It's a big laugh when saying you would find a lot of people that would accept them online. THe only factor key of success I see in a blood bowl online game is making it in the LRB spirit. Only.

If the online game wasnt absolutely waterproove to hacks and balancing abuse, you will have 500 Skaven Teams with 4 One Turn Scoring Gutter Runners in 5 Minutes after booting the server.

A common gunner runner or a wood elf receiver should score in one turn. If yuo want to loose some euro bills, please feel free to ask for it. ANd it's a well know tip, in the BB community. Could you tell me who won the resurrection tournament ? A lizardmen team. The tiptoe tournament ? An undead (or human, i don't remember it well) team.

Note that i would have written that private but it gets on my nerve and so i decided to make this public.

The same for me.

Chaos Team =/= Chaos Team. So its not automatically Halfling > Chaos because it depends on some factors like fortunate die rolls...

Listen, its not Random with whom you play. For example you could start playing the people from this board. You will have a large buddylist very soon and always find somone to play.

Random or not ? PLease don't forget that Blood Bowl is a game, using small toys in pewter, with nice dices (I noticed now you used die).

I can't resist to give you a real good address, where your ideas would surely be more appreciated: look in Google for "Blood Bowl Central" board.








[/quote]

[Toby]

DCF im sorry you understood 0,0% and i have the feeling that you don't want to. To mee it appears that to you and a lot of others here its cool to keep Blood Bowl away from the masses, keeping it "elite" and away from "mainstream".

The reason gamers are able to make money with SC is its populatity. Its a side effect and it shows how big interesst in a game can grow.

Shutting down fan projects with lawsuits is poor - As soon as it gets a commercial product, things get difficult.

Board games are limited by noumeros reasons i have pointed out a number of times. Ignore it if you want to, but you cant connect a board game to the internet in order to play. Playing by email is like using your horse to ride to work in the year 2002.

Item Trades in D2 are one of the major attractions of that game. Period.

You cant compare the balance of SC and BB because SC players are way way more keen on balance. I terms of BB we would not talk about +1 MA but +0,1 MA.

The Blood Bowl community needs these guys because if someone actually bought the game so manager would eventually decide it would be a good ideaa tho develop further products for the hobby. But who needs to win customers anyway ?

Nobody would force YOU to play online DFC, but for the rest of humanty it would be nice to have the opportunity to find someone to play - hopefully not you.