Inducing MVPs and FAME

[Joemanji]

Free corndogs for the neutrals?

[voyagers_uk]

I also voted D & H and was the first to do so, I just felt it was easier to load the poll than explain something that I think is self-explanatory.


Matt. more and more I think you guys should be playing 3ed

[mattgslater]

Inducements were designed to help reduce the in-game imbalance between two teams, so I don't see any justification for allowing MVP additions.

I understand this. I think Inducements should be able to be used for this purpose. I'm not proposing doing away with any Inducements; for all I talk of nerfing Stars, it's not happening (which is funny, because my tertiary teams are the primary beneficiary of the current Star Player cheese). But some of our lower-ranked coaches feel a sense of hopelessness because they can't get their TV out of the gutter. Inducements don't help with that.

We have a few coaches who are really, really down on their ability to get value from inducements. Yeah, it's in their heads, but you know how that whole human brain thing works: "My Wizard rolled a 1 and my Wandering Apo rolled a 6; why bother?" Chainsaws had a rough season last year, too, though big stars did pretty well. Those results don't actually mean anything, no, but in the heads of the coaches who remember Hack Enslash dying on his first attempt (with a Bribe left unused), an alternative that guarantees some value would be very welcome.

As for FAME, are you suggesting that the less famous team (or indeed any team who can afford it) is capable of going out and "buying" some more temporary fans?

We've hashed over public sympathy for those plucky underdogs, or the lower-ranked team forgoing some inducement cash to choose a friendly venue, or a big marketing campaign, or bussing in fans. The latter led to discussions of inducing Gate, but we decided it was too meta-meta-meta-gamey. It's pretty easy to do "plausible" fluff in a setting like BB.

Matt. more and more I think you guys should be playing 3ed

Yuck. We're doing this to avoid that. Though we would pick up a couple decent coaches if we did.

Seriously, brilliant though it was for what it was, I think there are like two or three things that 3rd ed had better than LRB5. IMO, LRB5 resolved most of the problems the earlier editions built in, maybe not the way I would have, but to my satisfaction. So, given the convenience of playing (and thus discussing) the current ruleset, we try to keep the heavy house-rules to just the league format section (where heavy house-rules are commonplace), and apart from that merely to tinker with Inducements and team management a little.

Chiefly, I think this game would be better (particularly for our specific crowd) if it were slightly easier to skill your speedbumps, and significantly easier for a trailing team to get back in the development race, which is much more fun than being a perpetual underdog. The house rules we use/will use are built around that core objective.

[mattgslater]

Free corndogs for the neutrals?

FREE BEER!!!

[sann0638]

It arises from the grotesque coaching disparities that we have to cope with. Read: I win almost all of my games, but I have a couple other pretty solid coaches too, and a couple of rank amateurs who everybody likes and we don't want to leave them feeling sour.

Are Tier2/3 teams a good answer to this?

[mattgslater]

It arises from the grotesque coaching disparities that we have to cope with. Read: I win almost all of my games, but I have a couple other pretty solid coaches too, and a couple of rank amateurs who everybody likes and we don't want to leave them feeling sour.

Are Tier2/3 teams a good answer to this?

Not if maximized. Truth be told, the difference between a casual coach and a fanatical game-junkie far exceeds the difference between Halflings and Wood Elves. We have one coach who beats everybody down with his Undead, then plays a couple fun games with his Ogres, but those Ogres give as good as they take (they're 2-1-1, and the loss was to my 5-0 Halflings). I could build a team I couldn't win with, but I can beat anybody down here with any team race if I build and play like I mean it (nobody will play my Halflings anymore; they'd rather get creamed by my Tier 1 teams). And why play if you're not playing to win?

But even if they did solve the problem, who wants to play Halflings and Ogres all the time? It's fun now and again... so what we did is give out the same basic prize for the top three, which makes it easier to see your way to success.

[Podfrey]

Here's an alternative solution to coaches feeling like they don't know what's best to take, how to use the inducements, how to get that extra SPP to skill that lineman, etc............ teach them.

From reading between the lines of your posts it sounds like this is more of a problem than the rules, so why not encourage them to look at how (& why!) they should set up, when it's best to take a lineman off the LoS and throw a quick pass to make that MVP into a skill, etc. We have a league of 20+ coaches all regularly playing LRB 6/CRAP and honestly, it works just fine.

Whatever you decide to do in the end though, I wish you the best of luck

[mattgslater]

That's not the problem. My guys aren't bad. I win at everything, man, not just Blood Bowl. It's like a curse. It'd be great if I was the tournament type, but that just doesn't sound fun to me. I handicap myself (or get handicapped by others, like in Settlers of Catan), but I still usually win more than my share. So we need to have prizes for second place if I'm the commissioner, because I'm always the odds-on favorite. I really wish I knew how to apply that to something that really mattered.

But like I said, that's not the problem.

1) We like to compete on relatively equal footing, so we like to reset from time to time. We've incorporated mechanics that are neither-here-nor-there enabling teams to retain some elements from previous seasons, to build a sense of history.

2) We like to keep the trappings of real-world sports leagues when convenient. A seasonal structure with a postseason tournament is a) the way we've always done it, b) very fluff-appropriate, and c) lots of fun.

3) We have some coaches who can play a lot of games and some who can play a few. Those who can play just a few usually fall behind.

4) Postseason elimination in BB sucks. Most BB coaches have the stomach for maybe one garbage match. So you have to let any coach into the tournament if they play at least several games.

5) As a consequence of 3 and 4, you get these insane tournament imbalances, which are just not fun. Inducements don't make it all that much less not fun, frankly.

And, as an aside...

6) Inducements really favor good coaches with low-value teams more than anything else. I learned this the hard way: after I got my High Elves over 2M this season, I started playing rookie Halfling, Chaos, Nurgle, etc. to see if I could help some of the stragglers build up, but I whipped them around just as hard as I always do, mostly with Star Players, Wizards and cards (oh, and the Halfling MC, of course). Yet, when the 0-4 team goes up against the 6-3 team, the same amount of inducement cash amounts to little or nothing, and the 6-3 team wins in a laugher.

I'm not proposing major surgery. 150k-200k for +1FAME, and 200k for an MVP.

[sann0638]

That's not the problem. My guys aren't bad. I win at everything, man, not just Blood Bowl.

Come join the MBBL. See if any of us mere mortals can give you a decent game

[mattgslater]

Can we get back on topic? I'm a game-addict, and I like working and sleeping and doing other things I have no choice about. I also like being able to keep a job and a girlfriend, you know? So I don't play games online anymore. Instead I spend way too much time here, and play tabletop games whenever I find someone who will play me. It still eats too much time, but it's manageable, you know?

[voyagers_uk]

plus the MBBL Algorithm will hate you and punish you

[voyagers_uk]

Why not just handicap yourself.


teams playing you start with 1 bribe and you can only field 10 men for the first drive

[mattgslater]

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but

a) That doesn't solve my problem. How many ways can I say that? Damn. My problem, the raison d'être of this entire thread, is that some teams won't make it to the tournament with a full suite of games, and I want to solve this problem through inducements. That whole competitiveness thing, that's a tangent, an influence on our league rules.

b) That's not respectful to the spirit of fair gaming. Would you feel good about losing to a coach who plays Halflings with special handicaps? Would you even feel good about winning? As it is, there's no loss in losing, but there's a big up in winning; why would I change that? Seeming fair is all-important. You can write rules with one player in mind, but the rules still have to hit everybody the same way, given the same situation. Seriously, having multiple prizes solves that problem, and everybody's happy.

c) That's major surgery. Two inducements are a lot smaller in terms of rules impact.

[mattgslater]

plus the MBBL Algorithm will hate you and punish you

As long as it's random, baby. I'll take whatever Nuffle and my opponent can throw at me. Now, if you tilt the balance so mattgslater always skulls or rolls 1... . Seriously, though, I'm not putting myself forth as a great BB coach; I know I'm good at BB by comparison to other games, and that I'm good at games in general, but I've never been to a big BB tournament, so I don't know if I'm just good, or better than that. Frankly, I don't really care. I'm good enough to teach others how to get good at BB, and that's good enough to do what I need (keep my itch scratched), but I also know I keep getting better, which makes me infer that good enough isn't.

Specifically, I'm pretty sure that I'm a natural blocker and risk-assessor, a diligent student of the Cult of Position, and every day a better clock/TRR manager, but I'm also a bit too much of a gambler when it comes to contingent actions and easy dice. I just about never truly whiff on order-of-operations, but I'm somewhat too prone to hang on rather than just taking the safe route when I have a dilemma, and then watch a 2d block fail and lose the action. I'm better at defense than offense, which means I win a lot of blowouts, and when I lose it's usually my offense that lets me down. I've started focusing on offensive philosophy over the last season, for this reason. I generally take a third fewer casualties than other successful coaches with the same team races; I attribute this primarily to my blocking and hedging skills.

I think I have some kind of natural blind spot with Skaven: I have a hard time playing both with and against them (.600-ish going both ways, as opposed to .800+ overall), and I'm not entirely sure why. It's possible that the Skaven strategy just indicates the team will win a quarter of its games and lose a quarter of its games, which kind of makes sense given the team's great MA and lame AV, without the mass-AG4/A-access of Wood Elves.

Now, can we get back on topic?

[plasmoid]

Hi Matt,
this isn't meant as taunt: Seriously, you should get a team in the MBBL.
It's not really online playing, as you can't do a game in one sitting.
Most of the time it's one turn per day, 10 minutes tops.
Lots of fun.
And I promise you that there are some very competent coaches to compete against.

Back on topic:
IMO, there's nothing you can do, certainly not with inducements.
Great disparity in coaching skill can't be helped by any system, that at the same time tries to be in any way "fair".
That's the nature of the game.
I think the whole direction of the game has been to ensure that the (significantly)better coach will win the majority of his games.

I'm a little worried by what you write about resetting, but transfering some stuff.
That certainly ruined a season for us here, before we stopped those transfers.
I hope you've got that covered in a good way.

In my league, at the end of the season, we ran the championships (for the top third of the teams) and a runner-up championship for everyone else. Perhaps that might work for you?
In the underdog championships, weaker coaches (or coaches with underdeveloped teams) will get a real shot at a series of close games, skill points and a prize.
Heck, if you're used to giving out 3 prizes, why not have top third, middle third and bottom third championships?

Cheers
Martin