Death Zone 2 Feedback thread

[Mystic Force]

I will just add my thought on the use of "optional"

I think that the rules as stated are considered the default position and that changing them is an option. That's fine, except that the default will be considered the normal option to choose and changing them requires an act of will. This is for your league commissionaire (LC) or tournament organizer (TO), then you must hope they have a good grasp of the effect on the games played for the environment being played, what players expectation are and all sorts of complications. And that you know what you are getting yourself into.

But it might be helpful if the default option of the stated rule was chosen as the most neutral in game effect, so that people do not have to actively choose to move to a neutral position. The "Optional rule" section from DZ1 does a good job of indicating these choices as being available but you choose to include them, which is probably better (easier to swallow?) than a choice to exclude an item which has considerable opinion splitting (Pilling On I am looking at you!) which I do not think could be single handedly excluded from the rule set without significant discussion (to put it mildly) with Halfling and Chaos lining up on opposite sides of that one. I think it makes it easier if it is a chosen opt in situation.

Bloodbowl is great for its ability to customize the general rules to fit a certain game need or theme. Part of the success of tournaments all these years when it was out of production has to be the variety of events staged with different emphasis to keep it from becoming stale. You can also tailor your league to commitment level and competitiveness.

But I think this should all start from the most neutral rules set with approved opt ins available as choices. Except special play cards, you should all be forced to take 10 and enjoy the craziness...

[stashman]

Every NAF tournament have optional rules, diffrent starting gold when creating teams.

The rules say 1,000,000

Tourneys have 1,100,000 - 1,300,000 etc

So no rule is the same

[dode74]

it might be helpful if the default option of the stated rule was chosen as the most neutral in game effect, so that people do not have to actively choose to move to a neutral position

How are you defining neutrality? I suspect defining which options are "neutral" will be a matter of opinion. Is FF at 10TV or free the "most neutral" position, for example?

[Glamdryn]

it might be helpful if the default option of the stated rule was chosen as the most neutral in game effect, so that people do not have to actively choose to move to a neutral position

How are you defining neutrality? I suspect defining which options are "neutral" will be a matter of opinion. Is FF at 10TV or free the "most neutral" position, for example?

It would be nice if there was Core and Optional, but lets be honest, its kinda seat of the pants with GW. That being said there seat of the pants DZ2 was seated very well and I think its a very good direction. lt is exceedingly difficult to keep on top of everything latest and greatest in the BB world because "too many cooks... tooo many cooks." And some of those cooks haven't played Blood Bowl, ahem Grak and Poopleberry.

[Mystic Force]

To be honest I do not have a good idea how you would define the more "neutral option". I think one way you could do that though is a neutral rule has less impact, reduces randomness or gives a narrower spread of results.

I personally like the more crazy random style of bloodbowl, but I don't think that is the neutral position. Not with the way the rules have evolved over time to be tighter for the more competitive tournament play. I just expect that the majority (and here I am stating my guess at what people want and not stating this as the actual position of people, they can speak for themselves) the default position is the rules laid out and they should conform, to this hypothetical neutral position.

For the example of FF, now that its effect on a team are more limited, than the past, the value to TV should be less impactful as FF is less impactful. IF you therefore want a "success tax" then opt in to FF effects TV, because it does not give you the same improvement as 10 of other things, now however in a league with similar teams FF is likely to have little variety so really not effecting inducements all that much.

I hope that gives an outline for one way to consider this, there are others. I don't think I want to play neutral bloodbowl I should just state, but like to play BB under a LC who likes wackiness not WAACiness, and as I am the LC for the leagues I have played in normally then I get to choose.

[stashman]

FF is used when trying to Gain a Sponsorship so now i DZ2 FF is important!!!

[Mystic Force]

FF is used when trying to Gain a Sponsorship so now i DZ2 FF is important!!!

But as sponsorship is in the clearly defined optional list, then it makes some sense for the LC to decide to have FF for TV when using the optional sponsorship rules, and leaving it out when a league does not use them. The default position is no sponsorship rules so the default position for FF would then follow as FF not for TV. If my initial assumptions in the previous post are correct, and I do not have a wide enough data set to say if I am.

Now one thing that occurs to me is that under my scheme we would end up with a large and unwieldy rule set of choices and options for any league or tournament to decide on, where these become active choices where previously they were passive choices. That would add undue complications if the number of choices becomes to large or if the most played options were no longer the default because of the neutrality clause. Some people in this thread have expressed a preference for playing the default set up and don't like the arbitrariness of these optional additions and under that regime may lose out on some of the flavor that BB can add, if we trend towards neutral positions.

NOTE: I am speaking from a point of ignorance as I do not currently have a copy of DZ2 in my ownership.

[Lyracian]

FF is used when trying to Gain a Sponsorship so now i DZ2 FF is important!!!

But as sponsorship is in the clearly defined optional list, then it makes some sense for the LC to decide to have FF for TV when using the optional sponsorship rules, and leaving it out when a league does not use them. The default position is no sponsorship rules so the default position for FF would then follow as FF not for TV. If my initial assumptions in the previous post are correct, and I do not have a wide enough data set to say if I am.
NOTE: I am speaking from a point of ignorance as I do not currently have a copy of DZ2 in my ownership.

I do not have it with me but from my recollection it is FF 8 or 13 for a +1 or +2 bonus; effectively a 5% or 10% increase in the chance of getting a sponsor.
Personally I am fine with FF being a tax on good coaches; the problem with making TV FF the optional rather than default rule is that it would make people feel worse about using the optional rules as suddenly there team costs more for no reason.

[stashman]

Play for fun

Why even bother with FF giving TV. Same for all teams.

[garion]

FF is used when trying to Gain a Sponsorship so now i DZ2 FF is important!!!

But as sponsorship is in the clearly defined optional list, then it makes some sense for the LC to decide to have FF for TV when using the optional sponsorship rules, and leaving it out when a league does not use them. The default position is no sponsorship rules so the default position for FF would then follow as FF not for TV. If my initial assumptions in the previous post are correct, and I do not have a wide enough data set to say if I am.
NOTE: I am speaking from a point of ignorance as I do not currently have a copy of DZ2 in my ownership.

I do not have it with me but from my recollection it is FF 8 or 13 for a +1 or +2 bonus; effectively a 5% or 10% increase in the chance of getting a sponsor.
Personally I am fine with FF being a tax on good coaches; the problem with making TV FF the optional rather than default rule is that it would make people feel worse about using the optional rules as suddenly there team costs more for no reason.

^^^^. You say your self, for no reason, plus teams have been retired from FF bloat. Stashman is right, why bother adding FF to TV at all... It really shouldn't add to TV. 2 ff or a skill... There is no question what I would rather, Tv is meant to equal team strength. FF is almost entirely worthless in a game, sure it can help with a kick off result, but really, its to such a tiny extent that its worthless. This is really a no brainer. If you want to make life more unfair for the better coaches in the league you play in then that should be the house rule, the core rule should be the one that makes things as close to fair as can be for all teams. Flat skill costing and skill/player progression is another story entirely though, and should be addressed. This is simple to fix though.

For the record here is one of my teams that I retired -

2x Bull Centaur (all rookies)
6X CD blocker (all rookies)
3x Hobgoblins (all rookies)
1x Apo
2 RR (I dropped 1 rr to get my TV down before deciding to retire)
13 FF

TV= 1120k

Games played - 51
win ratio - 38/7/6

So why would I ever try and play with this team? I had my team history which I wanted to continue, but that is a rookie roster. The team took a right bashing, they were already carrying injured players. I had money to replace my CDs and Bulls.
There is no point carrying on. I would be playing at a big disadvantage I could just start again with a new team, which i did. Any rule that promotes team retirement is bad. End of story as far as I am concerned.

[MacHurto]

^^^^. You say your self, for no reason, plus teams have been retired from FF bloat. Stashman is right, why bother adding FF to TV at all... It really shouldn't add to TV. 2 ff or a skill... There is no question what I would rather, Tv is meant to equal team strength. FF is almost entirely worthless in a game, sure it can help with a kick off result, but really, its to such a tiny extent that its worthless. This is really a no brainer. If you want to make life more unfair for the better coaches in the league you play in then that should be the house rule, the core rule should be the one that makes things as close to fair as can be for all teams. Flat skill costing and skill/player progression is another story entirely though, and should be addressed. This is simple to fix though.

For the record here is one of my teams that I retired -

2x Bull Centaur (all rookies)
6X CD blocker (all rookies)
3x Hobgoblins (all rookies)
1x Apo
2 RR (I dropped 1 rr to get my TV down before deciding to retire)
13 FF

TV= 1120k

Games played - 51
win ratio - 38/7/6

So why would I ever try and play with this team? I had my team history which I wanted to continue, but that is a rookie roster. The team took a right bashing, they were already carrying injured players. I had money to replace my CDs and Bulls.
There is no point carrying on. I would be playing at a big disadvantage I could just start again with a new team, which i did. Any rule that promotes team retirement is bad. End of story as far as I am concerned.

How can you have so little money for redrafting? FF does not need to be paid and your TV is 1120 so it effectively means you have 990k to use. Given the minimum is 1000 (+10 per match +5k td/cas) it means you likely made a mistake. Also the apo is 2 skills so you should not redraft it.

In any case, if a team is so destroyed that they need to hire all rookies/performed so bad they only get 990k, it is consistent with the fluff to retire them, imho.

And I say this while convinced after this thread that, for fluffy leagues, FF should not be part of TV, by the way.

[iamcrazyjoe]

I do not have it with me but from my recollection it is FF 8 or 13 for a +1 or +2 bonus; effectively a 5% or 10% increase in the chance of getting a sponsor.

You straight up add your fan factor to your roll, fan factor is by far the biggest decider on whether you gain sponsorship or not. You need a 20 result on a d16. A fan factor of 8 adds 8 to the roll, far more than 5% improvement.

[Milo]

I do not have it with me but from my recollection it is FF 8 or 13 for a +1 or +2 bonus; effectively a 5% or 10% increase in the chance of getting a sponsor.

You straight up add your fan factor to your roll, fan factor is by far the biggest decider on whether you gain sponsorship or not. You need a 20 result on a d16. A fan factor of 8 adds 8 to the roll, far more than 5% improvement.

That's correct. An 8 FF awards you a sponsorship on approximately 31% of your games, even if you lose. Winning the game gets you up to +3 additional, so a 8 FF team should get a sponsorship on at least half of their wins.

Lyracian is quoting, albeit slightly incorrectly, the benefits of having a high FF when you try to become resident in a stadium. (It's +2 on that roll for 8 FF or +4 for 13 FF.)

[garion]

^^^^. You say your self, for no reason, plus teams have been retired from FF bloat. Stashman is right, why bother adding FF to TV at all... It really shouldn't add to TV. 2 ff or a skill... There is no question what I would rather, Tv is meant to equal team strength. FF is almost entirely worthless in a game, sure it can help with a kick off result, but really, its to such a tiny extent that its worthless. This is really a no brainer. If you want to make life more unfair for the better coaches in the league you play in then that should be the house rule, the core rule should be the one that makes things as close to fair as can be for all teams. Flat skill costing and skill/player progression is another story entirely though, and should be addressed. This is simple to fix though.

For the record here is one of my teams that I retired -

2x Bull Centaur (all rookies)
6X CD blocker (all rookies)
3x Hobgoblins (all rookies)
1x Apo
2 RR (I dropped 1 rr to get my TV down before deciding to retire)
13 FF

TV= 1120k

Games played - 51
win ratio - 38/7/6

So why would I ever try and play with this team? I had my team history which I wanted to continue, but that is a rookie roster. The team took a right bashing, they were already carrying injured players. I had money to replace my CDs and Bulls.
There is no point carrying on. I would be playing at a big disadvantage I could just start again with a new team, which i did. Any rule that promotes team retirement is bad. End of story as far as I am concerned.

How can you have so little money for redrafting? FF does not need to be paid and your TV is 1120 so it effectively means you have 990k to use. Given the minimum is 1000 (+10 per match +5k td/cas) it means you likely made a mistake. Also the apo is 2 skills so you should not redraft it.

In any case, if a team is so destroyed that they need to hire all rookies/performed so bad they only get 990k, it is consistent with the fluff to retire them, imho.

And I say this while convinced after this thread that, for fluffy leagues, FF should not be part of TV, by the way.

Your reply confuses me on many levels. First of all. Why should a team be forced to retire because of FF... ever? That's frankly nonsense. Yes they were destroyed, but it is a very bad game mechanic regardless of fluff if you are forced to give up because you took 1 beating, or if you do continue you do so with a huge handicap after already suffering, especially when you can retire the team start again with the essentially the same roster only get 130k more inducements?

There are no mistakes here. I know FF does not need to be paid for. But this example has little to nothing to do with drafting. There is no mistake there, the team just took a beating, and as a result was reduced to a rookie level team (Albeit one that is 130k TV too high), once I fired my injured and hired new players etc... Redrafting, end of season phase will just make this type of thing occur more often than it did in CRP.

The overall point here is that FF serves no purpose, and not only that - on occasion actually has a negative impact on the game. As I have said before, any rule that promotes team retirement for no reason is a bad mechanic, it really is THAT simple.

[MacHurto]

Ok, thought it was redrafting as we were discussing FF and redrafting (or so I thought) and not retiring a team mid season. I agree it makes sense for "story" leagues to have FF for free.