FUMBBL :: Online Blood Bowl League

Kanil

Joined: Apr 28, 2013

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 05:05

dode74 wrote:

The fact remains, though, that some races do tend to have more difficulty... ... in maintaining a treasury.

And Underworld definitely aren't one of them. Their players are cheap -- only 3 cost more than your typical elven lineman. The starting roster has most of your needs covered, meaning you start saving up money immediately. Goblins start with dodge, and regularly get KO'd/BH'd, injuries that keep them out of harms way, but don't get them fired.

coombz

Joined: Oct 12, 2010

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 09:40

i want a Fumbbl LRB

[rest of wall of text deleted because, actually, the above sums it up well enough]

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bghandras

Joined: Feb 06, 2011

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 13:07

Cash and Injury. One of the issue is that injury is a function of armor, which differs team by team. Why not change it so that it is not a function of armor? One idea below:
1. When unmodified armor roll is 12, then nasty things happen. (Like kill, Niggle, stat decrease.)
2. When unmodified armor roll is 11, then MNG.
2. When armor is broken, and "injury" roll is 10-11-12, then it is always badly hurt, unless unmodified armor roll is 12.

Sideeffect is that killstack would cause Badly hurt, and nothing more. Killstack would dominate a single game, but wont retire a team.

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dode74

Joined: Aug 14, 2009

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 13:47

It's not only a function of armour, though, it's also a function of skills. Blodge has half the chance of going down to even make an AV roll as Block or Dodge (tackle dependent, ofc). This would make Blodge even more powerful than it is now. In turn this would make tackle better, ofc, which might turn out to be a good thing.

bghandras

Joined: Feb 06, 2011

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 13:49

dode74 wrote:

It's not only a function of armour, though, it's also a function of skills. Blodge has half the chance of going down to even make an AV roll as Block or Dodge (tackle dependent, ofc). This would make Blodge even more powerful than it is now. In turn this would make tackle better, ofc, which might turn out to be a good thing.

I did not say the word exclusive. I agree that it is a function of skill, and also a function of blocks generated.
At your point: Tackle, Block is available to all teams. Dodge is not so easy, but one double is expected on a well developed player.

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Faulcon

Joined: Aug 02, 2003

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 13:59

harvestmouse wrote:

The game is missing aging massively. It's not the amount of players aging removed from the game (I'm not sure that was even the intention. I think the thought was taht 1 injury guys wouldn't be sack). It was the threat of aging.

Players were skilled slow, spp were spread more evenly across the teams, and rosters were bigger and one reason for this was to keep the mvps becoming dangerous.

This has 3 massive effects on the game now:

1. There's a lot more control over team creation. Meaning that there's more chance of cookie cutter builds.

2. Less need for reserves, less need for skilled players over the chosen few. Which means if things do go wrong early, the game is over.

3. Players race their chosen legend through to legend status in ridiculously quick time and this has majorly diluted legend status.

Aging was part of it sure, but more important was TR. Every spp added tr so 8 two skill players were roughly the same price as a single 6 skill player. Now that one 6 skill player is worth the same tv as 6 one skill players a legend is much easier to carry.

Also I don't think that aging has anything to do with roster size. That's more down to inducements being better value than handicaps were (although some of those were incredibly broken) and the fact that treasury doesn't count against TV.

Finally the cookie cutter builds are only different from LRB4 in that traits no longer exist and stats or doubles cost extra TV. Those were the only reasons you saw different builds in LRB4, nothing to do with aging.

Garion

Joined: Aug 19, 2009

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 14:03

to say it is or was nothing to do with ageing isn't totally accurate. Ageing did play its part in bigger rosters, as did even skill distribution from TR, as did a number of the handicaps which I listed in my page 2 post, as did fouling as it meant you carried a spare linemen or 2 early on as you would invariably lose a player to the ref. The whole rule set was geared more towards bigger rosters.

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JimmyFantastic

Joined: Feb 06, 2007

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 14:12

Ageing was a terrible mechanic and everyone who thinks it was good is wrong.
That is a simple fact.
You may like the effect it had on the environment but such an effect could have been found by different means.

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Woodstock

Joined: Dec 11, 2004

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 14:20

Ageing was a great mechanic, the implementation was just terrible. I think it would do wonders if it was reworked and implemented. Any way, LRB4 had it flaws, CRP has it flaws, combining and perfecting for FUMBBL would be awesome, but hard to achieve.

cthol

Joined: Nov 10, 2003

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 14:20

JimmyFantastic wrote:

Ageing was a terrible mechanic and everyone who thinks it was good is wrong.
That is a simple fact.
You may like the effect it had on the environment but such an effect could have been found by different means.

Agreed. Trimming high TV teams is good, but to do it with a mechanic that actively punishes you, at random, for playing well (i.e. scoring touchdowns, CAS, completions etc) is an awfully negative way to go about it.

If you want to make sure the death rate stays high after taking out ageing, do one of the following:

* Increase CAS across the board by making blocking more deadly: either reduce everyone's armour by 1, or just make the casualty table more lethal. DON'T do it by giving only some teams access to insanely overpowered hitters.

* Increase CAS across the board by making fouling more deadly.

Garion

Joined: Aug 19, 2009

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 14:24

It did have to go as it was hated by the majority. Some of my ideas on page 2 go someway in addressing that, basically fouling so that low tv bash returns again and so there is a weapon against high tv teams without resorting to off field incidents like ageing and assassination of players from earlier editions. Something else I would bring back would be secret weapon rolls. Auto sending off does not give weapons which are already fairly weak the chance they need to hurt their opponent through lucky rolls. You probably only get 4 hits a half with a chainsaw against a good opponent with good positioning. Against av 7 that's only 3 av breaks if you are lucky, then that gives you a reasonable chance at causing 1 ko. So they are just too ineffective. If you go gung ho with them they will be put on their backside very quickly. A chance to play a 2nd half with them could help achieve a little more damage.

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koadah

Joined: Mar 30, 2005

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 14:42

Woodstock wrote:

Ageing was a great mechanic, the implementation was just terrible. I think it would do wonders if it was reworked and implemented.

If it does not start until e.g. the 4th skill it wouldn't be so bad.

Also the new niggle isn't so bad either.

The way I see it it is mainly CPOMBers, one turners & AG5+ers that need sorting out.

CPOMBers need less sorting out if you nerf CPOMB.

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harvestmouse

Joined: May 13, 2007

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 16:32

Faulcon wrote:

harvestmouse wrote:

The game is missing aging massively. It's not the amount of players aging removed from the game (I'm not sure that was even the intention. I think the thought was taht 1 injury guys wouldn't be sack). It was the threat of aging.

Players were skilled slow, spp were spread more evenly across the teams, and rosters were bigger and one reason for this was to keep the mvps becoming dangerous.

This has 3 massive effects on the game now:

1. There's a lot more control over team creation. Meaning that there's more chance of cookie cutter builds.

2. Less need for reserves, less need for skilled players over the chosen few. Which means if things do go wrong early, the game is over.

3. Players race their chosen legend through to legend status in ridiculously quick time and this has majorly diluted legend status.

Aging was part of it sure, but more important was TR. Every spp added tr so 8 two skill players were roughly the same price as a single 6 skill player. Now that one 6 skill player is worth the same tv as 6 one skill players a legend is much easier to carry.

Also I don't think that aging has anything to do with roster size. That's more down to inducements being better value than handicaps were (although some of those were incredibly broken) and the fact that treasury doesn't count against TV.

Finally the cookie cutter builds are only different from LRB4 in that traits no longer exist and stats or doubles cost extra TV. Those were the only reasons you saw different builds in LRB4, nothing to do with aging.

Sure, I was talking about aging only.

Aging affected roster size in 2 ways. 1. You may have had a larger roster to prevent your high spp player from getting an MVP.

2. As you were losing higher spp players, this tended to mean your TR was cut by the loss of heavy spp players. This in turn Gave you higher earning potential with lower skilled players. This meant there were a lot more teams around with more players with less skills.

Teams tended to be less cookie cutter, as there were more players on teams. This meant 2 things. 1. More players, less chance of teams being built exactly the same. 2. More players meant more utility positions. Chances to put odd skills on players.

Arktoris

Joined: Feb 16, 2004

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 16:47

harvestmouse wrote:

Teams tended to be less cookie cutter, as there were more players on teams. This meant 2 things. 1. More players, less chance of teams being built exactly the same. 2. More players meant more utility positions. Chances to put odd skills on players.

Would definitely disagree with this. The weakest thing about lrb4 that made it the worst ruleset in the last 15 years was the fact that it pigeonholed you to select the same skills over and over.

I invite you to take a look at people's old lrb4 teams and notice how many blitzers had block mighty blow guard tackle. the only time they deviated from the formula was when they rolled a trait or attribute.

Same with linemen. Block, tackle, dirty player. roll doubles, guard.

It got so monotonous that many people started calling the sea of orc teams "Fisher Price orcs", and refused to play vs dwarves on the account that the game would be dreadfully boring (same skills, same tactic over and over).

CRP brings back some of the old glory of 3rd edition by bringing in some new skills and opening access to others. what a breath of fresh air that is.

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happygrue

Joined: Oct 15, 2010

Posted: May 18, 2014 - 18:00

Great read Garion. I realize the folks who know what they are talking about (read: old wise heads) disagree with me on this, but I'm going to to ahead and have my opinion anyway:

I think fracturing the community with house rules would be a net good thing if done carefully. That is, that we don't actually fracture the community, but instead put a up a Manhattan Project together and test out ONE rules set with fixes attempted along the lines of what Synn says:

Synn wrote:

Very good work Garion.

I have never been shy about knocking Galak, but for all his flaws I will say this:

-He did push through a game that was an improvement over LRB4. The knock is that in his effort to 'push', he failed to make it the best game possible.

Literally, CRP only needs to address the balance of violence (clawpomb vs. fouling) and it will be perfect within the whistles. Anything else that could be done to improve the game would be the rosters/development aspect which is always going to be different for a massive online league like Fumbbl than for a small dedicated TT league.

This ONE rule set can be tested and tweaked for a time and then tried out against the current rules and a year later we have data on which is working better. While there is danger down that path as Garion points out, there is also gain: We no longer have a dead game. Personally, I fear that smart people dismiss this with hand waving, but we do have a dead game here. How many people hang on because there is still a chance the rules will change someday? What happens if it ever becomes clear to those people (myself included) that the rules really never will change again?

My thought is, if the rules are really now fixed in stone then we're boned over the long term. And if the rules ARE going to change again someday then why aren't we getting out ahead of it this time with some proposals based on data from an actual perpetual league? Shall we sit around and wait to see if Cyanide develops something they call LRB 7.0 and gets enough people playing it so that the NAF has to take it seriously? People tell me this will never happen, and maybe people know best. But if they somehow get 60% of the total people playing BB online to be playing it and can rightfully claim it as the "most recent" rules set then what is every future new person to the game going to think?

Anyway, let's get the wise guys together and see what they cook up. It will be fun to watch when the whole thing implodes in shouting match. I MEAN... it will work and there's nothing tow worry about! Wink

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