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Poll
Would you like to split the Box division in two group (SuperStar and Legend) and others?
Yes would be great!
7%
 7%  [ 5 ]
I do not have any opinion
7%
 7%  [ 5 ]
No! I Like the Box as it is.
85%
 85%  [ 60 ]
Total Votes : 70


Grod



Joined: Sep 30, 2003

Post   Posted: Jan 26, 2021 - 11:13 Reply with quote Back to top

It's not a horrible thought, but the issue is in many timezones it's already hard to get blackbox matches. There was at least one division in the past that had a tiered progression system similar to what you are describing, but it didn't survive the test of time.

You could tweak the matchmaker to favor similarly ranked coaches playing each other. This would only work in timezones where enough coaches activate, I suspect.

By the way, if you care about your ranking, playing much higher ranked coaches can be a fast way to increase yours. Against a much higher ranked coach, a loss barely decreases your coach rank, while even a draw can increase it quite a bit.

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koadah



Joined: Mar 30, 2005

Post   Posted: Jan 26, 2021 - 11:41 Reply with quote Back to top

Catalyst32 wrote:

Our team was an Independent so all 11 games were OPEN to whoever we could get each season. And his philosophy was to play 3 teams you SHOULD beat, 3 teams that SHOULD beat you and 5 Toss Ups based on what you imagine your Level was.


This is a cool way to build a schedule.

If people are not very good, Box won't deliver this for them.
There are not enough coaches/teams for it to be worth trying to be too clever with the scheduling

People can use Ranked or League to provide the matches that Box doesn't give them.

145 Club FTW! Mr. Green

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Xandyreoch



Joined: Jun 21, 2020

Post   Posted: Jan 26, 2021 - 13:15 Reply with quote Back to top

i would far rather face a legend than face rookies game after game after game, more exciting if anything
Muff2n



Joined: May 20, 2017

Post   Posted: Jan 26, 2021 - 13:17 Reply with quote Back to top

I do echo the sentiment that people should ideally be matched with coaches of a similar ability. But I would rather match making relied on CR rather than TW as a way of achieving this to not split the user base. The risk of people not getting games at all is a bigger danger imo.

I did previously poll with this in mind in this thread:
https://fumbbl.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=31552

I also suggested we move to CR matching in the BB2020 thread. Christer gave his responses as to why he is not in favour. My conversation starts here:
https://fumbbl.com/index.php?name=PNphpBB2&file=viewtopic&t=31530&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=500

Whilst it is great to be able to face a stronger coach than yourself (if you have the right mindset), the converse is not true. That's why basically all games and sports pair you up with people of similar ability.


Last edited by Muff2n on Jan 26, 2021 - 13:37; edited 4 times in total
Joost



Joined: Mar 17, 2014

Post   Posted: Jan 26, 2021 - 13:18 Reply with quote Back to top

Nelphine wrote:
I would love to see MMR used in box. I think if we did make it obvious that we prioritize a type of MMR (when the volume is high enough for that to matter), that might help keep other players, as they would know that playing against legends is not designed to be a normal occurence.

However, due to the size of our population of actual users, we would have to leave it purely as one aspect of matchmaking, and if the only way to get games is to pit a 150 vs a 165, then that would happen.

I would NOT split it by a specific group such as you have proposed. It would just be 'try to match up to someone near your scale.'

I WOULD also include racial biases (not what we have right now, where you get CR based on race, but instead you'd need to have some kind of comparative value to say 'they are playing an offrace, their CR will be lower'). However, the way other games do that is to give a completely unique ranking per rank, which wouldn't work here because being the best halfling coach ever, doesn't make you equivalent of the best dark elf coach ever - the races are NOT designed to be equal. And designing such a comparitive ranking of the races would be.. controversial. And probably not worth it. So then you'd need to make a single CR scale, but give each coach a ranking for each race, so even if you were the best halfling coach, but you only won 50% of your matches, you'd have an CR somewhere around .. wherever it is that you get 50% wins. presumably like 150? I have no idea actually what the CR scale is.


I am not in favour of diluting the player base and increasing the chance of a no draw. But I do really like Nelphine's idea. The most fun games that I've had usually involved an opponent that was evenly matched in skills, or slightly better than I was.
XpherAndTheAxes



Joined: Jun 20, 2020

Post   Posted: Jan 26, 2021 - 13:23 Reply with quote Back to top

i think sometimes its good to see some different skill level coaches, i feel like i learn a lot from playing a great coach like malmir, and there arent always an abundance of one kind of coach in box.
also i feel theres a degree of some of the higher CR coaches tend to cycle higher tier teams or more "efficient" builds, and a select few seem to have a multitude of superstar players in a minmaxed team after 200 games at 1200TV, so i feel it wouldpartially just result in a tier/split division
Christer



Joined: Aug 02, 2003

Post   Posted: Jan 26, 2021 - 13:28
FUMBBL Staff
Reply with quote Back to top

Without reading the responses to this post in detail, I'm going to give some feedback from my perspective.

As suggested, a hard split isn't going to work. There simply isn't enough players to make that work and it'd just be harder to find games at all.

A "soft" split, where CR is taken into account in some form (directly, or using the ranking brackets) by reducing suitability for cross-bracket games would be "favouring" these games rather than strictly preventing cross-bracket play.

However, there is a big problem with this. Certain types of coaches play using very aggressively built teams and if I'm going to be nice try to win by first eliminating the opponent and then focusing on the ball. This results in a lower than actual CR and opponents get "easier" by virtue of this artificially low CR, and the method becomes more successful. It's a spiral that ends up with minmaxing hard bash teams to get easier team, which makes bashing easier.

On its own, this isn't necessarily a problem because you could argue that these types of coaches will end up facing each-other and everyone will be happy. However, the core issue is that this ends up with less experienced coaches (lower CR) playing in this shark infested water which is not at all a fun experience for these coaches.

With a significantly higher participation rate, there could be more factors and groupings to control and limit this, but until we consistently have 20+ games per round, I'm not looking at adding more limits to the pairings.
MattDakka



Joined: Oct 09, 2007

Post   Posted: Jan 26, 2021 - 15:14 Reply with quote Back to top

If the CR formula of the Box removed the multiplier for rank difference and considered only the CR value (for example 170 vs 165, but not Legend-Super Star-Star etc.) the CR gain/losses would be less dramatic from game to game.
I often have to play lot of games just to get back the CR I lost due to an odd dicing, I know that over time it averages out but games last 1 hour, so lot of time is required to play many games and average my CR out again (and the time to play in a day is limited).
That would be a nice improvement too in my opinion.
Using the same formula (which is supposed to discourage picking in Ranked) for the Box (where you can't pick your games) has some issues.
Giving the choice, I would play only vs Super Stars and Legends (the CR gain/loss is more favourable), but they are rare in the Box. So, if I have to play vs Emerging Stars, ok, but at least don't penalize me like if I deliberately picked them, because I didn't. If I wanted to pick my opponents I would play in Ranked.
I know the formula will not be changed, but that's my issue with it.
Lasgalen



Joined: Jun 30, 2018

Post   Posted: Jan 26, 2021 - 19:30 Reply with quote Back to top

uhm. what about abolishing cr instead? Question
MattDakka



Joined: Oct 09, 2007

Post   Posted: Jan 26, 2021 - 19:43 Reply with quote Back to top

That would be fine as well. Either a good CR system, or no CR at all.
Without CR I might even play tier 3 teams from time to time. Very Happy
Nelphine



Joined: Apr 01, 2011

Post   Posted: Jan 27, 2021 - 00:48 Reply with quote Back to top

ooo so we could put 'average number of cas per game based on the team' as the first criteria for a match? so coaches that bash face each other, and then we start putting other criteria in?

(sadly that won't work with small draws as mentioned, but man, that's fun to think about!)

However, seriously Christer, thank you for pointing out that some coaches have something in mind OTHER than winning, and those playstyles DO impact other coaches as well. Accounting for that is VERY difficult - and almost completely different than any other MMR system, where the results of one match do not directly impact another match (for instance, starcraft, you always start with the same units, no matter what happened in the previous match).

That's a VERY important difference here, and reasonably, is more important than CR.
Joost



Joined: Mar 17, 2014

Post   Posted: Jan 27, 2021 - 09:24 Reply with quote Back to top

I'm curious: is that really such a big problem? I can think of one coach in he Box that valued cas over winning, and one that will bend any rule to his advantage in the match making system in order to pounce on new teams / coaches with his killers. The vast majority seem to play to win all comers. Or are we afraid this might change if the box scheduler would change? Would so many people actively lose games to lower their CR, so they meet less good coaches in their next game? Or am I misunderstanding something?
Muff2n



Joined: May 20, 2017

Post   Posted: Jan 27, 2021 - 11:19 Reply with quote Back to top

@Nelphine. It is a fair point that BB is different in that your previous games impact your current game. And a nod to explicitly pairing new coaches with new coaches would be a good thing.

But learning how to deal with the 'ignore the ball and kill' coaches is part of learning the game. In starcraft I lost countless times to protoss proxy gate, until my marine and SCV micro improved. The fact is that you have to have a certain level of skill to be able to play the game properly. And similarly in BB there's only so much hand holding that you can do in the 'competitive-comes-with-a-health-warning' scheduler.
koadah



Joined: Mar 30, 2005

Post   Posted: Jan 27, 2021 - 11:24 Reply with quote Back to top

If losing matches with your fun teams gets you easier matches with your competitive teams...

Umm... does that mean more matches with fun teams? Is that good or bad? Smile

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jdm



Joined: Nov 30, 2011

Post   Posted: Jan 27, 2021 - 12:50 Reply with quote Back to top

koadah wrote:


145 Club FTW! Mr. Green


koadah, that's a link to the old 145 club, the new one is here.

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