FUMBBL :: Online Blood Bowl League

Joined: Feb 24, 2023

Posted: Jun 11, 2023 - 00:13

on the subject of team OP or not...
I believe that if you are a strong player you should be able to achieve decent/good (WR > 50%) results even with Tiers3 teams. The current BT8 proves this. Although Tiers3 teams are not the first ranked in their squad, good coaches who use them have managed to place them in excellent positions (Spence's Khildren of the Khorn: 9/3/3: 70% WR really impressive for 15 games played in BlackBox!! or Java's Goblins are not a good team 7/2/6: WR 53% ( I would LOVE to hove such Win Rate in BlackBox with Goblins!) Not to mention Elyod and his '0 points' team made up entirely of Tiers3 (Tiers4 for the box): 39.5 points in 48 games... Simply sublime (but beware that Happygrue still hasn't finished the tour, and he too with the Tiers4 army is doing very well 34.5 points in 42 games!

Of course if your goal is to look only at highest coach ranking as it is calculated today - where no "incentive points" are given for playing "difficult" teams - then it is obvious that by mono-activating UW, Amazons, Undead, and Orcs (with the exception of me who gets slapped around with Orcs as well Very Happy

) you can aspire to higher scores.

And anyway, even if you're not a ranking freak, nobody likes to lose, especially in a game that requires so much time to invest. But if I lose with Khorne I can hide behind the excuse of the difficult team, but if you lose with Orcs there is really few excuse (a part if it is a very bad luck day and in BB there is always a 25% factor linked to Nuffle).

It would be nice if in the future "Redraft" if you could have a tournament where every coach is forced to use different races each time they apply for this tourney, until you have made the rounds of 'all races' available among the official ones.
It would also be nice in Blackbox , but I don't know how possible this is and/or if it makes sense and in general nobody should be "forced" touse one race (but perhaps incentivised yes): rest assured I'm not doing the poll this time! Razz

BeanBelly

Joined: Nov 14, 2019

Posted: Jun 11, 2023 - 13:27

I reread your original post 'Will this change your way to play?'

I was trying to say 'no'. Teams will be a little lower in TV and that is welcome from my perspective/preference.

But (always a 'but') looking those really impressive Tier 3 squad scores, I got thinking about the expensive and/or weaker sides struggling to build a competitive team. Chaos with no starting skills for example. Going to be a bit tougher for those sides, I'm sure that issue has been discussed plenty before.

I/We got a bit side-tracked by the Underworld OP question. I plan to leave the team to one side now; and move on to another race. Might pop my hummies into the GLT. Reason is I have just gone top after a typically jammy win! so please permit me a few unabashed seconds glorying in the bright sunshine at the pinnacle of the UW overall ^^

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Painting myself into a corner

ArrestedDevelopment

Joined: Sep 14, 2015

Posted: Jun 11, 2023 - 14:13

RDaneel wrote:

on the subject of team OP or not...
I believe that if you are a strong player you should be able to achieve decent/good (WR > 50%) results even with Tiers3 teams. The current BT8 proves this. Although Tiers3 teams are not the first ranked in their squad, good coaches who use them have managed to place them in excellent positions (Spence's Khildren of the Khorn: 9/3/3: 70% WR really impressive for 15 games played in BlackBox!! or Java's Goblins are not a good team 7/2/6: WR 53% ( I would LOVE to hove such Win Rate in BlackBox with Goblins!) Not to mention Elyod and his '0 points' team made up entirely of Tiers3 (Tiers4 for the box): 39.5 points in 48 games... Simply sublime (but beware that Happygrue still hasn't finished the tour, and he too with the Tiers4 army is doing very well 34.5 points in 42 games!

Of course if your goal is to look only at highest coach ranking as it is calculated today - where no "incentive points" are given for playing "difficult" teams - then it is obvious that by mono-activating UW, Amazons, Undead, and Orcs (with the exception of me who gets slapped around with Orcs as well Very Happy

) you can aspire to higher scores.

And anyway, even if you're not a ranking freak, nobody likes to lose, especially in a game that requires so much time to invest. But if I lose with Khorne I can hide behind the excuse of the difficult team, but if you lose with Orcs there is really few excuse (a part if it is a very bad luck day and in BB there is always a 25% factor linked to Nuffle).

It would be nice if in the future "Redraft" if you could have a tournament where every coach is forced to use different races each time they apply for this tourney, until you have made the rounds of 'all races' available among the official ones.
It would also be nice in Blackbox , but I don't know how possible this is and/or if it makes sense and in general nobody should be "forced" touse one race (but perhaps incentivised yes): rest assured I'm not doing the poll this time! Razz

There is a danger when we go looking for information that complements what we already believe that we will only find exactly what we are looking for. It's helpful to increase our skepticism for things that reinforce our beliefs.

What do I mean by that? That there are plenty of top coaches on this site who you will in all likelihood not find with 50%+ win% with tier3. In fact, there does exist the belief that being able to identify a team that is likely to lose most of its games and then dismiss it as an option is evidence of coaching skill in itself.

A sample size of 15 games is certainly not enough to provoke real discussion. In previous editions of this game (and the blackbox) some would even have dismissed these scores given the relative undeveloped nature of the teams being played with and against.
But fundamentally when you use tier3 races a large slice of your end results are outwith your control - it's more about who you play against.

And I say this as someone who is on friendly terms with all of the coaches referenced above, there is certainly no attempt to question their ability from myself, just to probe what is a rather dubious means of evaluation.

Forcing people to play teams they have no interest in has never been amongst the forefront of thought on this site. The trophy is as close as FUMBBL has ever come to that, and yet it is also opt-in and even has allowances to avoid using a tier 3 side if that is what a coach wishes.

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Chingis

Joined: Jul 09, 2007

Posted: Jun 11, 2023 - 17:23

This is kind of a imaginative thought-train about redrafting rather than the actual system in the rules, but is a response to some of the discussion about "good" or "bad" or even "problematic" teams. That's one way of looking at things certainly, but kind of assumes a certain play style and a certain type of player with a particular approach to the game. I think there's also a need to think about how the seasons and redrafting affects different types of players.

With an eternal league good players who min-max, see gaming the TV system as an intrinsic part of the game itself and always pick the most efficient skills can always build teams full of skills, backstory and star players. There's certainly nothing wrong with that, and that approach to the game will always be popular with certain players. But if you aren't such a good player, or want to explore the boundaries of the game (e.g. taking unpopular skills and trying to do something interesting with them) or want to press the "random skill" button, in an endless format you can always 'grind' your way to a similarly interesting, developed team over many more games, maybe with a few more (characterful!) injuries and with your team never quite the efficient machine of the first set of players.

My worry with seasonal redrafting is that I hope it doesn't too much affect the second set of coaches if it tries to solve for the cutting edge of competitive, efficient play. The increasing agent re-sign fee seems (theoretically) to be a particular problem in that regard. It pushes coaches to have to skill up their players *quickly* above all else, turning the game into a "how fast can you develop your team?" sprint and if you can't, or don't want to, then: "Oh well, nevermind. I guess you're shut out (to some greater or lesser extent) of that part of the game." Regardless of whether 20k extra is sufficient penalty to hinder the superstar coach who skilled a goatman with claws, might blow, juggernaut, extra strength and block all in a single season, what about the extra 100k for Frank, Jim, Bob, Helen and Margarita, the unskilled linesman who have 10 SPP between them all, but if one of them gets an MVP, they'll be able to take block. And besides that their manager wants to keep them anyway because they're loyal players who've been with the team from the start!

One part of the new ruleset I *really* like and think is especially elegant is the new niggling injuries. Rather than being detrimental to team performance like in the old rules (you don't want to take to the pitch a player light compared to your TV value), the new ones have no effect on the outcome of any actual game. They only affect team management after the game, and the fact that they make it more likely to get more NIs until you snowball towards inevitable death is just perfect! They're a really neat way of limiting player careers in a soft way, without just preventing you playing those players completely.

So, and here I'm just in wishful thinking land rather than commenting on the actual rules as they are, I wonder whether it would have been more interesting if that mechanic had been used, rather than agent fees? What if, after rolling to cure your NIs at season's end, every player you kept on the roster picked up one new NI (old age/wear-and-tear setting in!)? You might even decide to reduce the chance of curing old NIs if you really wanted to hammer the mechanic. I think that'd perhaps have been more fun in allowing you to keep your loyal players and progress them slowly if necessary, but have them get progressively more broken over the seasons and likely to die naturally, rather than just taking away your toys completely with a spiralling fee you can't afford/justify?

Dunno, just musing out loud!

RDaneel

Joined: Feb 24, 2023

Posted: Jun 11, 2023 - 18:10

ArrestedDevelopment wrote:

There is a danger when we go looking for information that complements what we already believe that we will only find exactly what we are looking for.

If we look for example at the general statistics (here we are getting a bit out of the redraft thread but I prefer to continue here than open a separate discussion) on Khorne for example used in Box (https://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=coaches&order=&type=blackbox&r=5916) we find on a sample of 89 games an average win rate of 57/22/25 of 76% which I find incredible . Of course it immediately jumps to the eye that they are very smart players (Happygrue, Spence, Elyod... etc. the same ones I mentioned before). And honestly I am a sucker for Khorne (look this last match is an example HOW NOT TO PLAY KHORNE : https://fumbbl.com/FUMBBL.php?page=match&id=4465315) and see someone who can IN THE BOX get 76% win rate with this stinking team is impressive.

I have not done an exhaustive search and you are probably right I am looking in the data for confirmation of what I believe. But it is sure that especially within the Box the number of games played with Tiers3 teams is much lower , I think those who use them are mostly in Trophy because forced to take some 0p teams... Without an incentive play Tiers3 team is a nightamre (and the only torurney give an incentive them to be used is exaclty the Trophy )