ArrestedDevelopment
Joined: Sep 14, 2015
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 Posted:
May 02, 2016 - 00:27 |
 
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I think the kick-off table responses are pretty interesting.
I'd have expected more hate for perfect defence and blitz! (even though the effect varies by match-up and is somewhat manageable unless it's a t16 result against a one turn attempt). Riot is something I missed in my own response - the gamechanging effect varies as well, but even a clock moving forward can leave you playing for a tie when a win might have been possible. It's also something you can't really account for. |
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JellyBelly
Joined: Jul 08, 2009
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May 02, 2016 - 00:32 |
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I have a couple of questions for you Dode. Do you think the current BB ruleset is 100% perfect? Is there anything you would like to see changed, or that you think could be improved? I notice that you didn't answer the questions that we're originally asked in this thread yourself. Perhaps you could give us your opinions (and take a break from shooting down everybody else's?) 
More generally, do you think the status quo must remain as it is at all costs, unless it can be proven beyond any doubt that it is broken? To what level do you think a proposed change to the status quo has to be justified? Do you think the BBRC did a good enough job of 'proving' that previous versions of the game were broken, before making all the changes that they did? |
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"Opinions are like arseholes, everybody's got them and they all stink." - The protagonist, Fallout 2
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harvestmouse
Joined: May 13, 2007
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May 02, 2016 - 00:39 |
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| dode74 wrote: | | Nextflux - there are plenty of polls. How about this one giving 65% saying "everything is fine". |
Isn't this issue really rather simple?
We're looking at different environments, in some environments it is fine.
TFF has a large amount of players that neither play on FUMBBL or Cyanide. A lot are NAF players that play TT tournaments. The fact you usually can take at most 2 skills on one player; CPOMB would never be an issue to them. I'd also wager there were a percentage of 'spite' voters over there, due to being fed up with the PC gamers general complaints about the combo.
Anything TT based is generally not going to have a large amount of games played. Therefore spam CPOMB isn't going to be a major issue.
Divisions like FUMBBL's ranked will have a problem that is very much diluted. One of the best things about Ranked is that you can alienate BS. So CPOMB teams 'shouldn't' be getting very many games. Outside of Smacks and tournies.
League will have a problem. However if it becomes too much of a problem, the commissioner can alleviate the problem by limiting the amount of teams in the league that can have it.
Your divisions that have a scheduler are where it's at its worst though. Your Blackboxes of this world. Lighter teams are avoiding going up high, and one sided matches with CPOMB are pretty pointless waste of developing a team. If it wasn't in abundance in divisions like BB, then no it wouldn't be a problem.
So the problem isn't actually the combo itself. It's how much of it is, and how it affects certain environments.
Also it can be used as a good tool for attrition. That's why I think it needs to be limited rather than castrated. |
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dode74
Joined: Aug 14, 2009
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May 02, 2016 - 00:45 |
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JellyBelly - No,I don't think it's perfect. There are a number of things I would change and I've posted ideas on those before. That doesn't mean I think those things are objectively broken, though: it's simply stuff I think I might prefer and would like to try house ruling. I'll answer the questions at some point tomorrow if I get the chance. I don't think I've shot anyone's opinions down where they have been presented as merely their opinions.
It's not necessary to maintain the status quo, but the only people with the remit to change anything simply out of preference are the game designers: GW, Cyanide and, should he wish to, Christer. If something can be shown to be objectively broken then I think those parties have a responsibility to change it. Changes made by the BBRC came under those same considerations: if it was broken then they pretty much had to change it, but if they simply wanted to then they had the remit to do so.
HM - lots of what sounds like rationalisation there. Theorybowl is fine, but I'd prefer to look at the data. We've covered that at length. |
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DarthPhysicist
Joined: Jun 14, 2015
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May 02, 2016 - 00:58 |
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I think BB is 96% perfect the way it is. The other 4% are Dorfs. |
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Using derivative humor since 2005.
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harvestmouse
Joined: May 13, 2007
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May 02, 2016 - 00:59 |
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I don't think data is going to cover the whole issue. It's not going to show you:
*Teams that are deliberately staying at low TV to avoid CPOMB and those trying to play to a strict weight.
*The helplessness and negativity of games dominated by CPOMB.
*The level of coaching needed to win with CPOMB rather an all round game.
Data's fine for having a different look at a problem. However you need experience and to be observing a division to get real insight. Don't get me wrong, I don't think it's the biggest problem in the game, I don't really have a real bias on the issue tbh. However it's pretty clear in the wrong environment it causes problems. It maybe as much a psychological problem as much as it is a real issue. However the fact is, it's causing issues in certain environments. |
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JellyBelly
Joined: Jul 08, 2009
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May 02, 2016 - 01:55 |
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| dode74 wrote: | | There are a number of things I would change and I've posted ideas on those before. That doesn't mean I think those things are objectively broken, though: it's simply stuff I think I might prefer and would like to try house ruling. |
This is really all that my opinion on cpomb is. I don't think it is bad enough to be gamebreaking (whatever that actually means), otherwise I wouldn't still be playing the game. I merely think, as matter of opinion, that it's introduction has made the game less enjoyable and varied, particularly high-TV bash. If you have a different opinion, I'm cool with that  .
| dode74 wrote: | | It's not necessary to maintain the status quo, but the only people with the remit to change anything simply out of preference are the game designers: GW, Cyanide and, should he wish to, Christer. |
Sure, that makes sense - only those who have been given the authority to do so have the right to actually change the game. Again, all I've been trying to do here is voice my opinion, as a player of the game. |
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"Opinions are like arseholes, everybody's got them and they all stink." - The protagonist, Fallout 2
"Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!!" |
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JellyBelly
Joined: Jul 08, 2009
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May 02, 2016 - 02:16 |
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Regarding the polls, I don't agree that either of them can simply be discounted, just because they aren't perfect and weren't done by experts in conducting opinion polls. For the FUMBBL one, I don't think it's too much of a stretch to draw the conclusion that: 'the majority of coaches on FUMBBL think that cpomb is a problem'. Obviously, we can't infer anything from it about the BB community beyond FUMBBL; however, I would expect the subset of 'people who frequent the FUMBBL forums' to be fairly well representative of the FUMBBL community. I would also expect that, if someone in that subset had any strength of opinion at all that 'cpomb is fine', they would have seen that thread (which is a sticky, after all) and taken the 5 seconds to vote on the poll. People who frequent the forums here like voting on polls - that's common knowledge. Besides that, the result was very significant (3x as many people voted that cpomb was a problem as not). So, even if there was some element of 'question bias', I would find it hard to believe that the error could be large enough to invalidate a result of that magnitude. Also, the question asked was very clear and simple, and the FUMBBL crowd are (mostly) an intelligent bunch. 57% of respondents voted 'yes, absolutely' to the question: 'Is clawpomb really a problem'. I find it hard to see how people would be significantly misled by that.
The poll on TFF is interesting and I hadn't seen it before, so thanks for linking it, Dode. It's obviously not ideal either, as people had to vote for either 'it's fine' or a selection of five very specific fixes, as opposed to a more general 'no, it's a problem'. Also, the poll is 5 years old, so perhaps those players hadn't had enough time to experience the negative issues with cpomb at higher TV. I agree with Harvestmouse's comments that the difference in the polls may be due to the different formats and the fact that TT players probably don't tend to play as many games at high TV with the same teams as coaches do in an online, perpetual, randomly-matched environment. So yes, maybe cpomb is more of a problem in those environments. |
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"Opinions are like arseholes, everybody's got them and they all stink." - The protagonist, Fallout 2
"Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!!" |
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Tricktickler
Joined: Jul 10, 2004
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May 02, 2016 - 03:35 |
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| dode74 wrote: | | That controls for one bias, but what about others which are yet to be identified. The only thing the poll tells you is that of the 598 who voted 57% think it is a problem. Drawing further conclusions from a poll would require something far more rigorous. |
If you were to guess how many fumbblers think it's a problem, do you think 10% and 95% would be equally good guesses as 50% and 60%? |
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zakatan
Joined: May 17, 2008
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May 02, 2016 - 08:25 |
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There is a CPOMB thread for all this kind of discussion. I'd love for this thread (about something else) not to become yet another CPOMB thread. |
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dode74
Joined: Aug 14, 2009
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May 02, 2016 - 09:06 |
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harvestmouse - actually the data can show you all those things. The question is whether or not they are relevant to the game being "broken". The last one, if it means "winning with CPOMB is easy", would absolutely show up in the data as an excessively large win% with such teams. I find the "in the wrong environment it causes problems" to be backwards: the wrong environment causes problems.
JellyBelly - As I said, no issue with opinions. When they are presented as facts without evidence to support them it becomes an issue.
No, the FUMBBL poll does not support the conclusion that "the majority of coaches on FUMBBL think that cpomb is a problem". Your assertion that "People who frequent the forums here like voting on polls - that's common knowledge" (that "common knowledge" phrase again!) is unsupported. Even assuming it is a truly random sample, the margin of error of such a sample is, as I said before, about 4%. That means you can, at best, say 53-61% think it's a problem. It'd only take a shift of 3% (about 20 people not voting "yes") to remove the confidence in the answer, and that's without considering the sources of bias.
People have had plenty of time to play CPOMB on the TFF poll. It's been around since LRB5, which was in 2006. You're dismissing it out of hand on a spurious basis while failing to reject the conclusions you're reaching from the FUMBBL poll which themselves are based on an erroneous analysis of the data you have, for the reasons I've explained already.
Tricktickler - I'm not going to guess.
Anyway, I said I'd answer the questions, so here we go. Probably no surprises here, and (almost!) all of it is merely opinion:
1. I don't think so, no. I think the on-pitch randomness gives teams a potential way back when things start going south, and that keeps a game interesting. Teambuilding isn't particularly random, imo.
2. I think so, yes. Some teams perform better (i.e. are built more efficiently) at some TVs than others. Dorfs perform better at lower TVs, for example, and drop off as TV increases. If inducements filled the gap fully then performance would be a matter of how well you built your team based on the race rather than simply "how high can your TV go", which itself favours certain races (e.g. elven teams, Chaos, Nurgle).
3. Yes, it's powerful. So is Blodge. Don't want to go into depth here as there is a thread for that ( ), but I think that the reason people don't like it is that it has a lot of variance. Sometimes you get pitch cleared and sometimes it does nothing, but people remember the former.
4. As it is I think it works fine.
5. Depends on what it is used for. I think it's fine for building a team initially, but for comparing two teams (both in terms of matching and inducements) it is flawed because it very quickly stops being a good measure of the mechanical ability of the team.
6. I think they need to be used in conjunction with a bank rule (or similar) to work properly. They are meant to act as a soft cap on TV by restricting the ability to develop or replace players as they are lost, but without a bank it's possible for cash-rich teams to just keep replacing players, maintaining high TV. It might work better as a "percentage of cash" as your TV increases, with a floor below which no cash is removed. For example,
1800TV - (Cash - 200k) * 20% is removed after the match
1900TV - (Cash - 200k) * 40% is removed after the match
etc.
Rough idea, not intended to be a final draft, but I think you see the concept: have as much cash as you want at low TV, but don't use it to springboard yourself to high TV for long.
7. FF is there to offer a handicap for successful teams, making the matches fairer. I like it as a concept but think it could be done better.
8. Linked to 2. If we're making inducements make a game 50-50 at all TV differences than Stars would need to be priced under that concept.
9. Define "balanced". Even black and white in chess have a roughly 55-45 relationship. I think the within-tier balance is fine. If you're asking whether there should be a T1.5, 2 & 3 then yes: why not? If you want more T1 races then they can be designed, but nothing is forcing anyone to play a T1.5 or lower race, so why is it a problem?
10. Elfball. You want elfball This is BB: it's not a fast game or generally a high-scoring, although it is faster now than it has been before.
11. Not really. Clock control is fundamental to many games. If someone is stalling on you then they are outplaying (or have outNuffled) you.
12. Ageing as a source of attrition is fine by me, if some other sources are toned down a little to counter it. Not the Cyanide version, though: that's rubbish.
13. Encouraged. Blood Bowl is silly by nature.
14. The wizard has some aura about it whereby people think it is gamechanging. It can be, sure, but it can also fizzle. If we're going with the response in question 2 then the cost would need to be adjusted to fit with that, and that would likely mean a cost reduction.
15. I think encouraging people to spend it on inducements rather than hoarding it would make for more varied games. Failing that I'd implement a bank similar to that I mentioned at 6. Those could be combined, actually, so that big cash reserves (e.g. 500k+) at low TV are discouraged while lower cash reserves are more normal at higher TV.
16. They're fine as they are. People moan about Blitz being gamechanging, but if it wasn't then you'd never set up to counter it, meaning you'd have a really good success rate going for "all out attack" as the setup. Blitz keeps the offence honest, and they already start with the advantages of setting up second, having the ball, and going first! One thing I might change is the rock: no worse than BH. |
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zakatan
Joined: May 17, 2008
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May 02, 2016 - 10:06 |
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| dode74 wrote: | 10. Elfball. You want elfball This is BB: it's not a fast game or generally a high-scoring, although it is faster now than it has been before.
11. Not really. Clock control is fundamental to many games. If someone is stalling on you then they are outplaying (or have outNuffled) you.
14. The wizard has some aura about it whereby people think it is gamechanging. It can be, sure, but it can also fizzle. If we're going with the response in question 2 then the cost would need to be adjusted to fit with that, and that would likely mean a cost reduction.
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I believe these 3 are kinda related. The problem with elfball and fast-paced games is that under the current rules/metagame is a losing strategy unless you have a natural onturner (then it's a dull strategy).
I agree with you that clock control is fundamental to BB and many other games, but changes in the stalling mechanics would bring tactical diversity to the game, in the sense that there would be more than one good clock control strategy. In fact, that's what the wizard does: it brings a threat to completely dismantle a stall that otherwise would be a SUPERMEGABUNKER, and it forces coaches to plan the drive accordingly.
Again, I'm all for good clock management, but I'd like to have more winning options than the 8-turn stall (both for agility and strenght teams). |
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Wreckage
Joined: Aug 15, 2004
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May 02, 2016 - 10:07 |
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| dode74 wrote: | 6. I think they need to be used in conjunction with a bank rule (or similar) to work properly. They are meant to act as a soft cap on TV by restricting the ability to develop or replace players as they are lost, but without a bank it's possible for cash-rich teams to just keep replacing players, maintaining high TV. It might work better as a "percentage of cash" as your TV increases, with a floor below which no cash is removed. For example,
1800TV - (Cash - 200k) * 20% is removed after the match
1900TV - (Cash - 200k) * 40% is removed after the match
etc.
Rough idea, not intended to be a final draft, but I think you see the concept: have as much cash as you want at low TV, but don't use it to springboard yourself to high TV for long.
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New and not the worst idea actually. Turns out you can make productive remarks after all. |
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dode74
Joined: Aug 14, 2009
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May 02, 2016 - 10:18 |
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| zakatan wrote: | | In fact, that's what the wizard does: it brings a threat to completely dismantle a stall that otherwise would be a SUPERMEGABUNKER, and it forces coaches to plan the drive accordingly. |
Interesting comment. Might be fun to tinker with a rostered, toned down wizard (or a cheaper induced version) - say a Wizard's Apprentice who can only fire a lightning bolt once a match which works on 4+ but can't break armour. Again, just throwing it out there...
Wreckage - there have been plenty of constructive ideas. Criticism is also constructive when used properly.
Thank you for the comment though. |
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Wreckage
Joined: Aug 15, 2004
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May 02, 2016 - 10:22 |
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How about this one:
For every 100k you have, you earn 10k less per game. Kind of a simple 10% tax that doesn't affect TV. You will not be robbed of your treasury or be forced to discard it in some way but as your warchest grows in size you eventually won't be able to grow in value anymore. (At around 500-600k) |
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