Talk Fantasy Football

hutchinsfairy wrote:Is "tier" one of your trigger words or something?

It's not.
But please take a look at that quote from the LRB.
"Some are more challenging than others." is not what I'd call "We divided them into tiers."
"Some football teams are better than others." is also not "We divided them into different leagues."
I'm still absolutely convinced, this only came in when Blood Bowl turned to competitive play, meaning the tournament scene.
I think I remember Jervis once saying in some interview that Blood Bowl wasn't really intended to be taken serious but rather to be a fun game.
Does that sound like "We need different teams with different diffculty level!"?

Regash,

Tom was on the BBRC. I was too - and was the ONLY BBRC member who was with Jervis from LRB 1 to LRB 6/CRP. We had many, many conversations around team levels of performance. Sometimes we boosted teams up in acheivement (such as Dark Elves), sometimes we lowered them (such as increasing Chaos Dwarf and Dwarf reroll costs, or reducing the MA of wood elf catchers).

I can assure you that Jervis himself deliberately designed some teams to be lower in the achievement scale than others. Whilst this was most notably Goblin and Halfling to start, he also deliberately intended Ogres and Vampire team design to also be at a different tier of success to the others.

So sorry to burst your bubble, but Tom is right.

Regash wrote:Does that sound like "We need different teams with different diffculty level!"?

Actually from speaking to Jervis a lot about BB design over my team heading up the design process ... yes there were definite design tiers for Blood Bowl from the start. However from the start ... it was only two tiers. Tier 1: All the teams except 2 Tier 2: Goblins and Halflings. And yes Jervis has been quoted frequently during the 3rd edition days that this was BY DESIGN.

Now comes the BBRC and my time as head rules designer and all we did was put real numbers on what those tiers meant and from talking with Jervis ... realized that there was gap between how he saw those Tier 1 teams performing and the teams he saw as Tier 2. Wide enough that it could be a whole extra tier. So Tier 2 comes about because it was the gap between how Jervis saw his original Tier 1 and Tier 2 teams performing.

Tier 1.5 was a BBRC creation only because we wanted to make sure the new teams were a bit more challenging and also did not introduce power creep to the game.

So the ultimate answer ... yes Tiers existed by Jervis's design in the teams from the beginning.

But wasn't BBRC also the time of the testing Vault?
And weren't those testers players?
And didn't they test mostly in competetive play?
And didn't their feedback influence decisions?
And haven't teams changed tiers because of players data?

Anyway, you say it's been like that from the start and I wasn't there. 'Nuff said.

GalakStarscraper wrote:So the ultimate answer ... yes Tiers existed by Jervis's design in the teams from the beginning.

Thanks guys for the answer!
I also never doubted that the design process was deliberate. So I take it, the answer to my qustion is: tiers were installed in order to provide differnent challenge levels for coaches.

Cheers!

Always good to understand more history... thanks Tom and Babs....

Digger Goreman wrote:Gw wouldn't know a good rules set if they contracted an outside company to write it!

I still stand by this, and they did (in effect) contract outsiders in the BBRC.... Yet Jervis Johnson's insistence on over-ruling/inserting what he wanted, seemed a persistent frustration all the way through CRaP.... On the best of days you guys had a workable process going and produced the #1 rulebook despite gw interference....

What gw is doing with 2016 is a far cry from the quality of the BBRC....

I concur with my esteemed friend from America

Regash wrote:But wasn't BBRC also the time of the testing Vault?

Yes, though the BBRC pre-dates the Vault by years. (BBRC made LRB1, Vault made LRB5.)

And weren't those testers players?

Yes.

nd didn't they test mostly in competetive play?

Leagues actually.

And didn't their feedback influence decisions?

Yes.

And haven't teams changed tiers because of players data?

No - they may have changed their placing within their tier, but I don't recall a team actually changing a tier (except perhaps Ogres, but then that was really a brand new team compared with the older version).

one day someone should write a book on the detailed history of BB for all of us fanatics (see what i did there?). tom, you don't have much on your plate, right? j/k

mikeyc222 wrote:one day someone should write a book on the detailed history of BB for all of us fanatics (see what i did there?). tom, you don't have much on your plate, right? j/k

I'll work on it. As soon as I dig out from my company being on life support for 3 years while I spent way too much time in hospitals with my wife and son. But I would like to do this project.

Tom

Regash wrote:But wasn't BBRC also the time of the testing Vault?

No ... BBRC was LRB 1.0 on ... Vault was LRB 4.0 on.

And weren't those testers players?

Yes

And didn't they test mostly in competetive play?

No ... league play was used for all decision

And didn't their feedback influence decisions?

Yes

And haven't teams changed tiers because of players data?

No ... no teams have moved from the Tiers they were original designed to be in. Ogres teams with Snotlings when made were placed in Tier 3. Blood Lust Vampires were new (used to be Off for a Bite) and were set into Tier 2. The 3 new teams were set to be Tier 1.5 from the start. This is my long way of saying ... no team was moved from the Tier it was first placed in.

Anyway, you say it's been like that from the start and I wasn't there. 'Nuff said.

However the questions above suggest you still doubt. Did the answers above help more?

When 3rd ed. came out in the mid-nineties, there were 12 teams, and 2 of those clearly sucked ass.
GW/JJ can not have been unaware of this. I mean - there was a studio league.
Also, a year(?) after the realease of BB, there was a big article in WD about halflings winning the US studio league. The article was clearly written in shock and awe.
Everybody know.

I'm not aware of JJ explicitly using the term tiers.
AFAIK the 'tier' was created by the community, and I'd guess it predates the LRBs. It merely expresses what most players will experience: That alm teams are not on entirely equal footing.

Then some time during the vault process, the BBRC decided to define 3 tiers and assign specific performance criteria to them. But they didn't come up with the concept.
Cheers
Martin

OK - heading a bit further Down memory lane if anybody is interested.

Remember that the original 12 GW teams were:
BB: Humans, Orcs, High Elf, Dark Elf, Dwarf, Skaven.
DZ: Undead, Wood Elfs, Chaos, CDs, Gobbos and Halflings.
With those 12 teams there are only 2 of the current 4 tiers - "tier 1" and "tier 3" (not 2 or 1.5).

Even though the game was crazier back then (4 rostered stars for each team, crrrazy powerful Special Play Cards, wizard-turnovers, etc.), we know for a fact that JJ did care about balancing rosters:
Undead teams were deemed too powerful for long term play, and regeneration was changed from 2+ to 3+ and then to 4+.
At the other end of the spectrum CDs were deemed too weak and were given a massive boost with the addition of the 2 (very good) Bull Centaurs.

With those changes, and those 12 teams, I think GW/JJ did a fairly good job at balancing tier 1 - to my mind the only problematic roster in that line-up is the Wood elf roster.

Mind you, we - the community - did manage to create some problems for ourselves. Around the time of the first LRB (AFAIK) the original BBRC made some roster adjustments that were fluff- (or perhaps rather aesthaetics-) based, and those changes made some good teams even better.
IIRC: Undead Wights were given S-access. They used to have just G.
And High/Dark Elfs were bumped from 6 to 8 positionals - most notably Dark Elfs went to 4 blitzers. Don't remember of Wood Elfs were also bumped to 4 catchers or if they had them all along.

The remaining teams were added later:
Norse, Amazon, Lizardmen were, I think, fan created and submitted to the Citadel Journal. I believe all of them were further changed before being included in the BB-Magazines.
Khemri, Necro, Vampire and Pro Elf were (Again AFAIK) added by JJ(?) as part of an attempt to replace the Undead and the High Elf team... which as we all know didn't pan out.

I don't remember how Ogres and Nurgle got added - but I do remember community input at some point, either as part of theor creation or tweaking.

Underworld, Slann and Pact were added during the vault (LRB5-6) period. Again AFAIK Galak was the main designer on Slann and Pact, while Darkson was the main designer on Underworld.

Cheers
Martin

plasmoid wrote:OK - heading a bit further Down memory lane if anybody is interested.

Remember that the original 12 GW teams were:
BB: Humans, Orcs, High Elf, Dark Elf, Dwarf, Skaven.
DZ: Undead, Wood Elfs, Chaos, CDs, Gobbos and Halflings.
With those 12 teams there are only 2 of the current 4 tiers - "tier 1" and "tier 3" (not 2 or 1.5).

Even though the game was crazier back then (4 rostered stars for each team, crrrazy powerful Special Play Cards, wizard-turnovers, etc.), we know for a fact that JJ did care about balancing rosters:
Undead teams were deemed too powerful for long term play, and regeneration was changed from 2+ to 3+ and then to 4+.
At the other end of the spectrum CDs were deemed too weak and were given a massive boost with the addition of the 2 (very good) Bull Centaurs.

With those changes, and those 12 teams, I think GW/JJ did a fairly good job at balancing tier 1 - to my mind the only problematic roster in that line-up is the Wood elf roster.

Mind you, we - the community - did manage to create some problems for ourselves. Around the time of the first LRB (AFAIK) the original BBRC made some roster adjustments that were fluff- (or perhaps rather aesthaetics-) based, and those changes made some good teams even better.
IIRC: Undead Wights were given S-access. They used to have just G.
And High/Dark Elfs were bumped from 6 to 8 positionals - most notably Dark Elfs went to 4 blitzers. Don't remember of Wood Elfs were also bumped to 4 catchers or if they had them all along.

The remaining teams were added later:
Norse, Amazon, Lizardmen were, I think, fan created and submitted to the Citadel Journal. I believe all of them were further changed before being included in the BB-Magazines.
Khemri, Necro, Vampire and Pro Elf were (Again AFAIK) added by JJ(?) as part of an attempt to replace the Undead and the High Elf team... which as we all know didn't pan out.

I don't remember how Ogres and Nurgle got added - but I do remember community input at some point, either as part of theor creation or tweaking.

Underworld, Slann and Pact were added during the vault (LRB5-6) period. Again AFAIK Galak was the main designer on Slann and Pact, while Darkson was the main designer on Underworld.

Cheers
Martin

Err - sort of. Regen went straight from 2+ to 4+ in White Dwarf #182. (The original box was released in WD 172 and Deathzone was 175).
If you ignore the detail, the broad gist of this is right.

If you have any specific questions - ask me.

plasmoid wrote:When 3rd ed. came out in the mid-nineties, there were 12 teams, and 2 of those clearly sucked ass.
GW/JJ can not have been unaware of this. I mean - there was a studio league.
Also, a year(?) after the realease of BB, there was a big article in WD about halflings winning the US studio league. The article was clearly written in shock and awe.
Everybody know.

Were goblins and flings not awful in 2nd edition as well? They certainly were supposed to be so in the fluff.

I played back then but just with friends and we mostly made up our own rules and teams.