DRAFT of League Rules

[BioLogIn]

Rycchus: since Slartucker wants to introduce clan play soon, stalling your game might virtually benefit your teammate (by preventing you opponent from another clan gaining points). Or one may just dislike a certain opponent and stall him so he will lose points.
Well, I hope Slartucker is right and the community here is relatively small, so we wouldn't have such problems.

Another note:
Five simultaneous games in a month _might_ be troublesome for unregistered players... or might not....

[Slartucker]

(Replying to ExDeath.) So basically, the only difference is that when it comes time to score, players are scored in random pairs (or groups) instead of individually. Doesn't sound too hot. Am I missing something here?

[Rycchus]

biologin said:

Rycchus: since Slartucker wants to introduce clan play soon, stalling your game might virtually benefit your teammate (by preventing you opponent from another clan gaining points). Or one may just dislike a certain opponent and stall him so he will lose points.
Well, I hope Slartucker is right and the community here is relatively small, so we wouldn't have such problems.

My point was that whilst it may harm your opponent, it wouldn't benefit you in any way, so it wouldn't be done manipulatively. However, with clans in play there might be room for more manipulation I guess.

Also surely if you disliked your opponent that much it would be more enjoyable to kick his ass than to timeout on him?

biologin said:

Another note:
Five simultaneous games in a month _might_ be troublesome for unregistered players... or might not....

I don't think it would, if they were staggered. It's more allowance than we had for the tourney, when we had four games in two (or was it three?) weeks. I don't think I'd intend on starting all my games at the start of the month, either.



Slarty: Perhaps as well as month winners and overall winners you could have some kind of "season" thing - every three/four months the winner for that "season" is calculated too. Then you could have mini-ASCII art for the months and regular-sized for the seasons. (perhaps medals and trophies, like you said?)

I like the idea of random 2/3-player teams playing melees. It encourages cooperation and interaction between different levels of players.

[BioLogIn]

Rycchus
(replying to your earlier post)
Swiss tiebreakers make sense only when players are swiss-paired during all rounds, which is not our case.

Agreed about ass kicking though )

[Rycchus]

You'll have to be more specific. Obviously it was designed for the players being Swiss-paired, but I don't see why it can't work as a tiebreaker in this instance. Do you just mean that it's unfair on a player who gets random-paired (and beats) five players who lose all their games, when he has the capability to beat five players who won all their other games? I don't think that's too much of a disadvantage. It won't have too much of an impact on results, I shouldn't think. And the Solkoff (or other Swiss-tourney-style tiebreaker) system does something to neutralise the obvious randomness you'll get from the pairings in the first place.

[BioLogIn]

Rycchus
Let's say after four games of 5 games league you and Spacca are both at 4-0 with similar tiebreakers so far.
Should the league be swiss-paired, both of you will likely be paired against opponents of similar skills (and, more importantly, of similar tournament scores). But since our pairings are completely random, you have one remaining game vs a 0-4 BioLogIn, and Spacca's last opponent is another 4-0 player named Slatucker. Thus, when the dust is cleared and round is over, both of you could be 5-0, but your tiebreakers will suck anyway thanks to your last opponent.

All player names are pure coincidence of course ))

[Rycchus]

And I would say that, should we both win, Spacca should be given more credit for beating a 4-0 player than I should for beating a 0-4 player. If I could have beaten Slartucker had I played him, then it's just my bad luck I wasn't paired with him. You're not really complaining about the tiebreaker here; you're complaining about the randomness of the pairings. My discussion about the tiebreaker validity was based on an underlying assumption that the pairings were as given.

[xade]

Just 1 point.
Let's say Xade: 4-0 is playing Rycchus 3-1
In both their last game.
Now, lets say the game is going *really* bad for me.

It would be adventageous for me, xade, to have an end result of 4-1/3-2 instead of taking the loss and ending at 4-1/4-1...

But then, that's bad form

Still, I'm really looking forward to this. And the advent of the clans...

(*pencils in a footnote about the isle...*

[Rycchus]

With a total of five games played each? Do you mean double death?
Or to stall so we each play four games?

If you're talking about stalling, you do kinda have a point there. But I'm not sure it's something that can easily be avoided...

[ExDeath]

admin said:

(Replying to ExDeath.) So basically, the only difference is that when it comes time to score, players are scored in random pairs (or groups) instead of individually. Doesn't sound too hot. Am I missing something here?

The benefits would be less need to use a tiebreaker system, as well as comraderie, and the fun result of getting to play a 2v2 melee for the season championship.

[xade]

yep... it's using the stall as a tactical advantage...

Sucks for it to be used. But I believe that we should come up with some way of shaming people that do it often early on so that it doesn't become an issue when the league starts.

[Derfel]

I'm wondering if it would be at all possible for our coders to come up with a simple PHP inputting type program-thingee to keep track of when games start and end. So when a player makes their first move in a league game, they have to "check-in" just like clicking the clock in chess. Just a random thought...?

[xade]

ohhh... that sounds kinda nifty...

[Slartucker]

Okay... as far as I know, there have never been any accusations of intentional stalling in ANY Warlocks tournament. And this wouldn't even be a tournament, and it would have a generous time limit. So I don't think we should worry about it too much.

The random team idea, while neat, conflicts with the direction I want to go with the clan stuff, and I think ultimately the clans will be much more interesting and fun. They also open up some pretty cool possibilities for team melees which have up til now only been glimpsed in that one BR/OOS battle and the several COTP ones.

[BioLogIn]

Rycchus
Look like you're right on that one, and I'm wrong (
Although I still feel like I'm forgotting some important argumentation I had in mind when I wrote this post. Maybe I'll remember it later =)