Why ClawPOMB is broken

[dode74]

If simplicity is on the cards, I would limit piling on to POW only (roughly halving the incident of piling on use, reducing the damage and slowing the speed of SPP accumulation).

It's an interesting idea. It'd be good to see some numbers.

That said, none of this is outside the realm of what either of you would like (to see tested?) as opposed to the combo being objectively broken as per the OP's claim. Were you chaps on some reconstituted BBRC any change to it you made would, based on what you've said thus far, be a matter of preference rather than a matter of hitting some metric and therefore being broken or otherwise. You'd have the authority to make changes on that basis, of course, but they would be designers' preference rather than some sort of fix to anything.

[Geggster]

People aren't inherently unhappy with 58% removal on a knock down, they just don't think it's right that their unskilled golem or black Orc is removed 44% of the time (assuming two dice, any one of three outcomes to take them down, no RR on blocking, clawpomb used if needed).

Pow-only reduces it to 17.7%. Is that a suitable metric? Well, that's a good question. We have some clever people here so a combo that arrives at a particular number is easy enough - we just need to know the required number.

I like Pow-only for the reduction in use but it's also thematic too - requiring the best potential block for defender to be defenceless enough for skill to work and also links in to the amount of dice used (more strength or big guy blocking increases chance of PO use and therefore injury).

[plasmoid]

Hi Dode,
I still disagree with your use of that original quote. Understanding language requires context, and that defines what is reasonable to think was implied, when something wasn't actually said. So I wasn't asking for "evidence of absence" - I was asking for ecidence of exclusivity - i.e. something in either the context or the statement to indicate that this was indeed the only balance considered while writing the CRP. Neither was present here.
For example, if someone says "Martin wears a red shirt" it would take either a special context or an "always" to make it reasonable to infer from the statement that I never wear a Black shirt.
Either way, I suppose that part of the conversation is rather redundant now.

About "balance" or "broken":
I think I understand what you're saying.
It feels like a circular argument, but I think I get it.
Balance can only be defined objectively by numbers. So any other thoughts or considerations (even by the designers themselves) about things being "too strong" or "not strong enough" - which in everyday language could well be referred to as "balance" - is actually not about balance, but about what the person/designer subjectively likes. Even if what he doesn't like is "the balance" of it.

And the only person who gets to act on "what they like or don't like" is someone with executive power. I.e. someone who can do whatever they bloody well please for whatever reason they feel like. Nobody fits that description currently. Apart from the new Dude at GW.

So CPOMB isn't objectively broken. And won't get changed.
Which I suppose in the end doesn't really matter, because even if it was objectively broken, it still wouldn't get changed.
As for being "subjectively" broken - well, everybody gets to have their own opinion on that

And CPOMB not getting changed is totally fine by me.
Because I (or PCRP+/NTBB) am not about changing the official rules. There. I said it Again

Cheers
Martin

[plasmoid]

Hi Galak,
happy to hear your input.
I have a hard time wrapping my head around the seeming conflict between:

That discussion does not relate to Claw/MB/POn as that was designed with full knowledge of what it was supposed to do and what % were desired for player removal options since so many off the pitch player attrition factors were removed from the game at the same time.

and

Now this I agree with. With the information I have now ... I would have gladly had that discussion with you and Ian and Babs.

Anyway, as I remember it the 58% thing was discussed openly on the forums.
It is indeed one of the great myths of FUMBBL that a FUMBBLer (Pixel?, Pixie? I forget), saw that number, and warned profusely about it, but as discussions had already been going for 2 years, it had been decided that only actual playtest feedback would carry any weight.
Also, IIRC, the 58% was comparable to Classic 3rd ed. bashy stats, so they were known to be high, but tolerable.
And - as you said - no TT Leagues (who were the only playtesters) ever reported a problem.
So there was never anything tangible to react to.

Cheers
Martin

[plasmoid]

Hi again Galak. And Geggster too

I to this day still like my suggestion from several years ago that Piling On have this line added:
"Re-rolls of armor or injury made with Piling On cannot be modified by Claw or Mighty Blow."
I know Plasmoid was not a fan of this ... but I liked its simplicity that if you are jumping on someone that you are not really using your arm strength anymore and nix'd the double chance to break AV 6 with the 3 skill combo.

I don't even remember what the problem was anymore. I'm guessing that your idea gives a lot more reprieve to high AV players than to low AV players(?). Dode ran the numbers, and IIRC, came up with the alternative version which is in PCRP+.
If you truly prefer your original version, then perhaps that ought to be in PCRP+. Perhaps a subject for PM?

Anyway, I gotta say I find Geggsters idea massively intriguing!

If simplicity is on the cards, I would limit piling on to POW only (roughly halving the incident of piling on use, reducing the damage and slowing the speed of SPP accumulation).

Good Things that I can think of off the top of my head:
*It affects different AVs equally, because it is shifted to the Block roll.
*skill interactions in the killstack remain unchanged.
*It is indeed quite simple.
*It no longer combos well with Block skill. Instead things might get cheeky with Frenzy. And Pro!
*Piling On gets better with 3-dice-blocks - which sort of makes it a skill that high-ST players are better at using than ST3 players.
I really like all of that.

Only thing I'm not sure of is not touching the straight Claw+MB combo. But that is so much less devastating than the full killstack, so perhaps that is worth just sucking up.

Cheers
Martin

[dode74]

I wasn't asking for "evidence of absence" - I was asking for ecidence of exclusivity

Exclusivity is, by definition, "absence of anything but". Therefore the burden of proof is on you to provide evidence of non-exclusivity.

About "balance" or "broken":
I think I understand what you're saying.
It feels like a circular argument, but I think I get it.
Balance can only be defined objectively by numbers. So any other thoughts or considerations (even by the designers themselves) about things being "too strong" or "not strong enough" - which in everyday language could well be referred to as "balance" - is actually not about balance, but about what the person/designer subjectively likes. Even if what he doesn't like is "the balance" of it.

And the only person who gets to act on "what they like or don't like" is someone with executive power. I.e. someone who can do whatever they bloody well please for whatever reason they feel like. Nobody fits that description currently. Apart from the new Dude at GW.

So CPOMB isn't objectively broken.

It's not circular, but basically that's the gist of it.

As for being "subjectively" broken - well, everybody gets to have their own opinion on that

Spot on.

The FUMBBLer of fable you mention was, IIRC, Flix.

Only thing I'm not sure of is not touching the straight Claw+MB combo.

I think there are far fewer people who find the CMB combo "subjectively broken" (to use your term). I like the positives of Geggster's idea, particularly the scaling with 1d and 3d blocks and the simplicity. Again, I'd like to see some numbers and some playtesting, but as a matter of preference I think I'd likely have few objections if it worked.

[plasmoid]

Hi Dode,
we won't agree on how language works.
If a statement is removed from it's context - such as "Martin wears a red shirt" - then it is just as unwarranted to infer that I only ever wear red shirts, as it is to infer that the speaker also meant "and assless chaps".
If you indeed think that inferring either or both of those makes any sense. Then fair enough.

As for the math on Geggsters PiOn, I might still have the old PiOn stats lying around somewhere. If not, then I'm sure a lot of people can do them faster than I can do them by hand.
Doing the math for the Blocks themselves shouldn't be compliacted at all.

Cheers
Martin

[dode74]

If a statement is removed from it's context - such as "Martin wears a red shirt" - then it is just as unwarranted to infer that I only ever wear red shirts

It is unwarranted to claim that you have any shirt of any colour other than red, since the statement provided does not provide sufficient information for you to make that claim. Any suggestion that you think that is silly is based on the contextual argument that (in general) nobody only owns red shirts, the context being your experience of the shirts people wear. The statement "What the BBRC officially used to balance the tiers was..." has no such contextual baggage. If you wish to claim there are other colour shirts, or other means of balance, the sentences provided do not support that at all: you'd need other evidence to support that claim and without it the claim is baseless, and possibly assless.

As for the numbers:
2db CPOMB PO on AV
Stun 13.4%
KO 17.6%
Cas 14.9%
Removal 32.5%

2db CPOMB PO on AV only on DD
Stun 14.2%
KO 13.9%
Cas 11.8%
Removal 25.7%

Your 26.8/58.4 translates to 21.2/46.2 (for a 2d block) under Geggster's suggestion, a roughly 20% decrease in both numbers.

[GalakStarscraper]

Martin,

I'm basically saying that I don't think the mechanic has an issue for the balance of the game.

However sometimes rules are changed for a feel of the game. This might be one of those. I'm not saying it is ... just that if the BBRC existed I would be open to the conversation and seeing what a change would do to Chaos/Nurgle win %.

[plasmoid]

Thanks

[VoodooMike]

I'm not saying it is ... just that if the BBRC existed I would be open to the conversation and seeing what a change would do to Chaos/Nurgle win %.

I think this last bit is important, and it's something that gets hand-waved away by the anti-CPOMB people. Player nullification is part of bash strategy, so anything that diminishes a roster's ability to nullify the opponent's players will result in a decrease in their win%... and most of the teams that can field CPOMB are already not sporting wonderful win%s.

In essence we're talking about an objective reduction in the ability of certain rosters to win games in order to adjust the "feel" of the game, because some people don't like having their players removed from the pitch at certain TV levels. I'm not sure anyone likes having players taken off the field, but is that a good enough reason to change the game?

[MacHurto]

As it is a change to Piling On, it would potentially affect win rates for anyone with enough strenght access. Therefore it would not be a nerf only to Chaos/Nurgle but many other teams, which should reduce the impact on Chaos/Nurgle (in comparison to changing Claw, for example). At the end of the day, it would give a small edge to agility teams, I guess. Many people that complain about Chaos would still complain as claw tores through their AV9 no matter what.

Nonetheless, I like the fluff that makes PO more effective If you are stronger than the opponent, as you rolling more block dices makes it more likely to activate

[dode74]

At the end of the day, it would give a small edge to agility teams, I guess.

That rather depends. A nerf to PO might see more tackle, for example. Theorybowl at this level gets silly, I think.

Many people that complain about Chaos would still complain as claw tores through their AV9 no matter what.

Let them complain. It's already been explained that this is the point of it.

[VoodooMike]

As it is a change to Piling On, it would potentially affect win rates for anyone with enough strenght access. Therefore it would not be a nerf only to Chaos/Nurgle but many other teams, which should reduce the impact on Chaos/Nurgle (in comparison to changing Claw, for example).

Which only makes the idea worse. If there's one legitimate claim about cpomb, which really is directed at claw, it's that at high levels of development the teams with claw access are simply better at bashing than any bash team without it, making those other bash teams niche-less.

Given that bash teams already perform worse than agility teams in terms of winning matches, the change would make bash teams win even less in general and do nothing to balance out the bashiness of various bash teams.

At the end of the day, it would give a small edge to agility teams, I guess.

...teams that already have an edge over bash teams when it comes to winning games.

[Wulfyn]

So I have defined a broken mechanic as one that removes player skill and/or player fun. Do you accept this definition?

How are you measuring increases and decreases in "player skill" and "player fun"? Or are we talking about complete removal?

Complete removal was just illustrative to demonstrate my definition of broken mechanics. We would measure it by demonstrating that the effect of player skill was significantly reduced by the introduction of that mechanic. This is why when you and Darkson say things like "no player gets more than 55% with ClawPOMB" it rings alarms. Surely there should be some players that have a 70% win rate? So we look more at the distribution than the average. That's why I'd like to see just high TV in the OC data.

TFF tournament postings for all regions for the last few years, sampled n=100 (took ages).

So low TV stuff, then?

Yes. The data I used to determine base cas levels (one that I felt would have no ClawPOMB but was still likely to have blodgers) was taken from TT tournaments, so the research I undertook to determine what was recorded as a cas were from those same tournaments.

If I make a claim then I have to justify that claim. I believe that I have done so

I am questioning the assumptions you are making.

Mostly you are saying you just don't accept the conclusions of my analysis. Re-read your posts again. After every reply I make you move to something else and re-iterate that you just don't accept the answer.

Why do you maintain that it is not relevant?

Because the game is not balanced around "position of a team within Tier 1", it is balanced around "is the team in the parameters for tier 1".

Why is that relevant? If the addition of a skill results in a 50/50 broken mechanic (as per First Blood Chess), but 50% is within your definition of Tier 1 balance then why does that mean it is not broken?

do you believe that Chaos Dwarfs do not perform any better in the long term OC league relative to other races than they do in TT?

I think they probably do. My main point is that it is not relevant whether their performance increases as long as it is within tolerances for the tier.

So you accept that CDs have improved by a significant amount? (You can choose what level of uncertainty you want significant to mean). And this is with the inclusion of lower TV CD results in there that would be expected to perform closer to the initial level, dragging the total results back to a lower average?