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How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Sun Aug 16, 2015 8:06 pm
by Digger Goreman
I've never seen anyone expressly using league challenges, as written in the rules, but therein lies the fix for ALL the cheese....

Although page 31 is within the tournament section, "League Challenges" refers to the regular season....

So, someone has mini-maxed the cheese out of the system.... Fix it by enforcing the challenge rules.... Make the abusive team be the one to issue a challenge to get a game and either, 1) channel the abusiveness to another abusive team (or overdog of sufficient killer power) or, if somehow that is impossible, give him a 2-0 forfeit and go play a more enjoyable match.... Remember, NO MVPs, nor any winnings accrue from these forfeits....

Not only reasonable, but actually in the rules....

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 4:29 pm
by mattgslater
Yeah, would work in leagues organized per the official rules. Except that vanity would keep a lot of coaches from taking that 2-0 forfeit. (That's not in my blood, for example.)

FUMBBL Ranked has a similar solution. You know you can't go too CPOMB crazy in Ranked, 'cause you won't get games. So you see it out there, but not by the truckload.

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 4:35 pm
by MattDakka
mattgslater wrote: FUMBBL Ranked has a similar solution. You know you can't go too CPOMB crazy in Ranked, 'cause you won't get games. So you see it out there, but not by the truckload.
That's not a solution, but bad game design.
What if I want to play clawpomb teams and nobody plays with me? Very competitive division, yay!
Where is the required attrition in the division if you can avoid clawpomb teams?
Nerf clawpomb instead and bring back a good ageing that applies to ALL teams with no need of having clawpomb-spamming teams in a division.

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 5:52 pm
by swilhelm73
Aging was a terrible solution to high AV players not dying enough, and it was pretty roundly hated. There was nothing like playing a game and hoping your player didn't level because of the silly aging roll...

Players should die/get a career ending injury on the pitch, not some arbitrary and random off the pitch mechanism

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 5:59 pm
by mattgslater
Bring back aging, I quit playing. It's that simple.

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 10:14 pm
by Smeborg
Simple solution (not within the rules): introduce a "Multi-Skill Premium" (MSP).

Second skill-up costs a player an extra 10,000.

Third skill-up costs a player an extra 20,000 (cumulative).

Fourth skill-up costs a player an extra 30,000 (cumulative).

Fifth skill-up costs a player an extra 40,000 (cumulative).

Sixth skill-up costs a player an extra 50,000 (cumulative).

So in the case of a player with 6 acquired skills, he would pay 150,000 (15 points of TV) on top of the cost of his skills.

In this way you can build ClawPoMbers and the like, but it will cost you substantially more in TV than at present, and your opponent will be able to take plenty of inducements. Coaches would have to build their multi-skilled players wisely and carefully.

Hope that helps.

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Tue Aug 18, 2015 10:51 pm
by mattgslater
That's too much, but something like that would be good. Maybe 10k extra for each skill category beyond the first a player has. Maybe that can replace the doubles penalty.

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 1:50 am
by MattDakka
swilhelm73 wrote:Aging was a terrible solution to high AV players not dying enough, and it was pretty roundly hated. There was nothing like playing a game and hoping your player didn't level because of the silly aging roll...

Players should die/get a career ending injury on the pitch, not some arbitrary and random off the pitch mechanism
Because THAT Ageing was based on rolls, not on a better (and not random) factor like number of games played/SPPs/player's title.
Players with too many skills have to be removed to guarantee a good balance in long perpetual leagues, how they are removed (on or off pitch) it's not important, what is important is playing a match not affected by too many CAS generated by clawpomb spam and on one turner freaks.
Smeborg wrote:Simple solution (not within the rules): introduce a "Multi-Skill Premium" (MSP).

Second skill-up costs a player an extra 10,000.

Third skill-up costs a player an extra 20,000 (cumulative).

Fourth skill-up costs a player an extra 30,000 (cumulative).

Fifth skill-up costs a player an extra 40,000 (cumulative).

Sixth skill-up costs a player an extra 50,000 (cumulative).

So in the case of a player with 6 acquired skills, he would pay 150,000 (15 points of TV) on top of the cost of his skills.

In this way you can build ClawPoMbers and the like, but it will cost you substantially more in TV than at present, and your opponent will be able to take plenty of inducements. Coaches would have to build their multi-skilled players wisely and carefully.

Hope that helps.
This would penalize teams with few or no starting skills like Slann, Khemri and Chaos Pact.

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:04 am
by adhansa
I played in a league that used the challenge rule for a while wayback. I t was really bad because being when challenging the challenger almost never got to play team they challenged, instead everytime someone was challenged to a matchup they didn't like they channeled it into some "killer-maxed, will destoy your team, doesnt really care about winning"-team. Wasn't a long experience as the main result was just that most people stopped challenging, fewer games got played and the league started dying and we had to come up with other methods of arranging matches.

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:40 am
by harvestmouse
swilhelm73 wrote:Aging was a terrible solution to high AV players not dying enough, and it was pretty roundly hated. There was nothing like playing a game and hoping your player didn't level because of the silly aging roll...

Players should die/get a career ending injury on the pitch, not some arbitrary and random off the pitch mechanism
Actually in hindsight, I think aging did a pretty good job. Ok we hated it, and it wasn't overly realistic however it did make teams share SPP around as they should have. Ok, it was in a very artificial way, but no way near as bad as how perpetual teams are running around now. I certainly didn't foresee this though (minmaxing as a concept may have existed but the term and usage didn't).

The real problem with the previous aging was the implementation. It should never had applied to skills 1 and 2 and that 'perms' lead to player retirement far too often. I think we need to look at a new set of perms.....or costing for perms, like whatball has tried to do.

So I think it's not so much the mechanic that everybody despised, but how it was so decisive. In my mind 1 bad roll on the aging table should not result in retirement. However a second should in a lot of cases.......not easy to get that right, but worth looking into I think.

I like how FUMBBL Ranked regulates what teams can get games, and therefore regulates how many killer skills a team should have. The problem is it's taken too far or not an even playing field. There are some teams that still get games, and I have no idea why, and some coaches that play far too many games that are against soft teams or opponents. I think the key to FUMBBL (in part) lies somewhere between the 2 main divisions.

FUMBBL has far too many 40 game legends running around, mainly due to the above 3 reasons (no mechanic to stop legend status, picking games, small tailored rosters). That needs fixing in my opinion.

As for fixing PO,MB and Claws, I've said my fix a few times, but not on here I don't think.

Claw: I think this works great as a mechanic, terrible fluffwise though. I can see why it was done, so I'm happy not to touch it. The only thing I would change is that it takes off a max of +2 off of the armour roll. So a Treeman for example would be AV8. You could go a bit further and only allow it to affect AV8 or 9, so that AV10 was a claw deterrent. That does complicate things however.

MB: Is a really strong skill. I think playing around with MB though would be like playing around with the moon. It's such a part of us that altering it, would have major consequences.

PO: I like PO as a major heavy hitting tool. By that I mean if you nerf it, it's just a regular skill and of not much use. However I'd like to see it used to help us. So my theory is that you need great Strength or Weight to use it (which sounds fair, a fling with PO is a little silly). So you must be an ST 5 or over player to take Pile On. This can be a natural ST5 or a gained ST5. Therefore, we basically use it as a big guy buff in a perpetual environment (which is needed).

On top of this, I'd now add that the Khorne roster could take PO across the board. However I think all their players should come with frenzy. This then becomes the only CPOMB roster or maybe just POMB roster. Due to their bloodlust and frenzied state they pile on with an unnatural strength.

I think also, probably buffing fouling ever so slightly, would also be a good idea, and a counter to PO. Fouling as a mechanic is a 'marmite' style issue. You love it or hate it, and I think the negative opinions (which are understandable) behind fouling lead to the nerf. There are a lot of ways it could be buffed, so trying a few slight tweaks would be optimal.

I think the key is to have a testing environment for perpetual, which we've never really had. Then you can change things 'softly softly', which is also important (if you ask me).

As for match making, I think that really needs a shake up. I don't like the challenge system. I'd prefer a FF (or recent win % system or at least used in handicapping).

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 2:39 pm
by mattgslater
I, for one, like the lack of an age cap. Yes it does lead to monstrosities in perpetual environments, but these same monstrosities add to the culture of those leagues and when Brakathor the Invincible finally goes pop after 439 games and way too many SPP, it's the subject of great water-cooler conversation or a cute blog post that gets rated max by all who read it. Not so much if he's forced into retirement by some rule somewhere after 25 games.

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 3:48 pm
by harvestmouse
Yes, you already said that. Getting legends is far too easy. With a 'responsible' mechanic, I'd like to see skill 6 comeback, and maybe even a skill 8!

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 4:39 pm
by Vanguard
mattgslater wrote:I, for one, like the lack of an age cap. Yes it does lead to monstrosities in perpetual environments, but these same monstrosities add to the culture of those leagues and when Brakathor the Invincible finally goes pop after 439 games and way too many SPP, it's the subject of great water-cooler conversation or a cute blog post that gets rated max by all who read it. Not so much if he's forced into retirement by some rule somewhere after 25 games.
In that case, you need some form of mechanic that modifies the Casualty roll to increase the likelihood of death as a players gains ranks. For example, adding the Player's Rank - D6 to the D6 roll on the Casualty table. I know that's an awkward and poorly worded system, but in principle it increases the chance of Death for higher ranked players without ever making it a certainty.

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:36 pm
by Chris
Vanguard wrote:In that case, you need some form of mechanic that modifies the Casualty roll to increase the likelihood of death as a players gains ranks. For example, adding the Player's Rank - D6 to the D6 roll on the Casualty table. I know that's an awkward and poorly worded system, but in principle it increases the chance of Death for higher ranked players without ever making it a certainty.
Yes I always liked this idea. Something like adding 5 to the D66 casualty roll for every skill/stat gained.

Re: How to fix claws, MiB, PO within the rules:

Posted: Wed Aug 19, 2015 5:39 pm
by swilhelm73
I really don't get the point of the responses to the initial post in this thread frankly.

Currently I play mostly in a league that is on its 15th season. There are a few legendary players in the league, but they die like any other player eventually. The highest TV in the league, remember after 15 seasons, is 2250...on a lizard team that has played 5 seasons IIRC. All teams eventually plateau, though usually where they plateau is a measure of the skill of the coach (and obviously the race too).

People generally play the bashier teams...especially for some reason orcs. People generally don't play agile teams, but those that do tend to do very well. Chaos has never won the title. Nurgle, Orcs and Chaos Dwarves have each one won title. Elves have won 4 titles (2 Pro, 2 DE). Vampires have also won 2 titles.

At least in a league with good coaches, they will keep each other's teams in check. Open style formats are different but frankly, that's why league play is clearly superior. And honestly if that CLPOMB team comes and knocks hundreds of TV off your team in an open match making league...who cares? You'll just draw a lower TV team as your next opponent. We should not be breaking league play to try and fix open formats - we don't need skill changes or aging. Especially not aging.