UKTC V Feedback Thread

[straume]

The only thing I didn't like was the tiebreaker being on the tier selection of the teams picked as opposed to strength of schedule or some other tiebreaker combination. Given the lack of granularity in the points system (with 60 teams you are going to get a lot in each final point tally) there needs to be a good way to create a tiebreaker to split those teams. This was most apparent in the 2nd - 4th place range where all teams were on the same number of points. Team Wales missed out despite playing on the top tables against the front runners all weekend. And tho it pains me to say it because I have so many friends on the team it felt like Doggy Bag All Stars didn't really deserve it as much as Team Wales or Alfea.

Tiering feels like a bad way to do it because the lower tiers are already getting a bonus to attempt to equalise them. And looking at the top 20 or so places that seems to bear out with around 5 tier 1, 5 tier 2, and 10 tier 3 doing that well. Stretching to top 50 we do see tier 1 places coming back (about 20 / 10 / 15 ish teams of each tier) but it seems clear that taking some tier 2 (necromantic / humans) or tier 3 (chaos / nurgle / underworld) is a better option that a lower tier 1 team (highest chaos dwarves were 73rd, highest orc was 112th). Why should a team finish higher than another because they took Chaos (7 teams in the top 20)? Just doesn't make any sense to me.

Just quick note on the top 20 first: You really should stretch any comparisons to all the team on equal number of points. The NetTD+NetCas tiebreaker on individual scoring means all the bash teams (Chaos) get ahead on the individual tiebreaker. So talking about top20 is a bit misleading.

Personally I am very surprised to see Chaos do so well as they did, especially after their "meh" performance in the Fumbbl team cup (with some of the strongest coaches in the world choosing them they still only got 50% win).

That being said: I think your analysis on that the "weaker" tier 1 tiems are bad picks for this particular tournament is spot on. Then again; with this rule set it really encourages people to step out of their comfort zone and go for a bit more risky choices. In the pre tournament discussion my team discussed this at length and we decided that the tie breaker is quite huge in this, so we will risk a tier3 team (Underworld) and we forego the safe Undead for slightly more risky tier2 (Humans). This is us doing metagaming, and I think it is a bit harsh to say that this would make us less "deserving" than the two other teams at the same number of points after six rounds. I would argue; quite the opposite. Creating your team with the tie breaker in mind seems sensible to me, and I really enjoy that sort of metagaming pre-tournament. Especially when it pays off!

I will agree that strength of schedule might be the best tie breaker that is out there, but that doesn`t mean this should be the number 1 tie breaker in all tournaments.

[Milo]

It would also be useful to have Race included on the match screen so not having to flick into the other website to check races - a nice to have but by no means essential.

Yes, plus table numbers?

This should be doable, but races will depend on the tournament organizer filling all that information in. You can count on it for the WC.

Also, once all the numbers were filled in (and the other captain was approving) it didn't say which was TD and which was Cas any more, I don't think.

We fixed this for day 2, not sure if anyone noticed. It's definitely good feedback, though.

Finally, the error messages were disconcerting - I got the impression that you couldn't submit any results until all results were in, because of them. A message saying "game 2 successfully submitted" would have been better.

Minor things, generally v impressed with it!

I'll work on the messaging, too. This was admittedly a rush job, as I only started working on it around New Year's. You can expect more polishing for future tournaments.

[Milo]

The only thing I didn't like was the tiebreaker being on the tier selection of the teams picked as opposed to strength of schedule or some other tiebreaker combination.

Tiering feels like a bad way to do it because the lower tiers are already getting a bonus to attempt to equalise them. And looking at the top 20 or so places that seems to bear out with around 5 tier 1, 5 tier 2, and 10 tier 3 doing that well. Stretching to top 50 we do see tier 1 places coming back (about 20 / 10 / 15 ish teams of each tier) but it seems clear that taking some tier 2 (necromantic / humans) or tier 3 (chaos / nurgle / underworld) is a better option that a lower tier 1 team (highest chaos dwarves were 73rd, highest orc was 112th). Why should a team finish higher than another because they took Chaos (7 teams in the top 20)? Just doesn't make any sense to me.

That being said: I think your analysis on that the "weaker" tier 1 tiems are bad picks for this particular tournament is spot on. Then again; with this rule set it really encourages people to step out of their comfort zone and go for a bit more risky choices. In the pre tournament discussion my team discussed this at length and we decided that the tie breaker is quite huge in this, so we will risk a tier3 team (Underworld) and we forego the safe Undead for slightly more risky tier2 (Humans). This is us doing metagaming, and I think it is a bit harsh to say that this would make us less "deserving" than the two other teams at the same number of points after six rounds. I would argue; quite the opposite. Creating your team with the tie breaker in mind seems sensible to me, and I really enjoy that sort of metagaming pre-tournament. Especially when it pays off!

I will agree that strength of schedule might be the best tie breaker that is out there, but that doesn`t mean this should be the number 1 tie breaker in all tournaments.

That was part of the intent when I originally suggested the average tier as a tie-breaker, to encourage this sort of meta-gaming. (Does a Squad take five tier 1 teams and a tier 4, hoping that the games the tier 4 team loses are offset by a better tie-breaker when matched up against other 5-0-1 squads?) Unfortunately, our rules committee did too good a job balancing the tiers in the ruleset, I think, so it became unnecessarily advantageous to take a comparable tier 3 team and get the tie-breaker bonus on top of that. (Or fortunately, depending on how you look at it.) Even though it was something I thought would really add a nice strategic element, I do agree with the decision to remove it from the WC. The rules are well balanced now.

There was some thought to a six-tier ruleset, which would have boosted some of those lower tier 1 teams, but you always have to weigh competitive balance versus complexity of the rules. I think the four tier system we're using is a good one, but as others have mentioned, there will always be winners and losers unless you try to go with a 26-tier system.

[Milo]

- Submitting results online was so good it makes you wonder why it has taken us so long.
- The system for entering was perfect - nice and simple to enter and verify.
- There were some cookie issues with the website preventing logging in, solved by clearing cookies or going incognito.
- As a nice to have if the fields could automatically enter the input to be a number field that would be sweet (I'm so lazy!).
- Last two points are really just because feedback is being requested, and are not complaints. The system was great!

Would you be willing to do some testing outside of an event to see if we can fix some of your cookie issues?

When you say "automatically enter the input to be a number field", what are you exactly asking for? Just to disallow non-numeric entry? Or is there an example somewhere on the internet you could show me of what you're looking for?

Constructive feedback is always welcome, but I'm glad to hear it was such a hit.

[Milo]

- website result site was excellent. It can be refined/ improved with races and table numbers but we should have had something like this this year’s ago. I would just love it to be rolled out for all NAF tournaments. If it could be an app too... i’d Pay more membership for that. If it could link to rosters and offer non-captains access it really would be a perfect thing. It felt like the Lucca WC app and the Dorbirn WC app need to have a perfectly formed offspring.

We will have a lot more of that implemented for the World Cup, I promise. To get this ready in time, I was working my day job, putting my kids to bed at 8pm and then working until 3-4am some nights. It all came together in the end and I'm thrilled with the positive feedback, but trust me -- we definitely have more planned and do not consider this to be an end state by any means.

The TojScory excel app Torsten has written will eventually be freely available, I think, but he'd be able to give you more details about that. The web app is, of course, going to be designed for the World Cup, and we'll have to consider things like long-term hosting fees and support costs (which are currently coming out of the WC budget), but if it can still be useful long-term, I'm not opposed to continued development.

[Jip]

It's a very small 'even better if', but was there any sharing of the results and draws for those of us who didn't attend, anywhere?

Would have been good to track how people were doing, though I followed 'my' team's progress via Sann's twitter and Facebook updates.

I'm not fussed about this for next year though as I fully intend to be there, so it won't be an issue (for me, anyway)!

The social media buzz was all positive, and the app sounds really good. There's a thread about an Android/iOS alternative to Score on here already that I've been keeping an eye on.

Agree that the pitch looks a little 'busy', but that tends to be a trend at the minute, not sure why. Same confusion with the EuroBowl one, too. Good to hear the pros struggle with it too though, means I'm not a complete buffoon!


Regarding the meta/tiering/tie-breaker chat, I'm looking forward to the day when I'm good enough for all that stuff to actually impact me. Must be tough at the top, boys!

See you there in 2020, for sure.

[Vanguard]

When you say "automatically enter the input to be a number field", what are you exactly asking for? Just to disallow non-numeric entry? Or is there an example somewhere on the internet you could show me of what you're looking for?

I suspect he means to set the form input type to be 'number'. Most mobile browsers will pick up on this and offer a numeric keypad for input rather than a full keyboard.

[20phoenix]

It's a very small 'even better if', but was there any sharing of the results and draws for those of us who didn't attend, anywhere?

Would have been good to track how people were doing, though I followed 'my' team's progress via Sann's twitter and Facebook updates.

I'm not fussed about this for next year though as I fully intend to be there, so it won't be an issue (for me, anyway)!

The social media buzz was all positive, and the app sounds really good. There's a thread about an Android/iOS alternative to Score on here already that I've been keeping an eye on.

Agree that the pitch looks a little 'busy', but that tends to be a trend at the minute, not sure why. Same confusion with the EuroBowl one, too. Good to hear the pros struggle with it too though, means I'm not a complete buffoon!


Regarding the meta/tiering/tie-breaker chat, I'm looking forward to the day when I'm good enough for all that stuff to actually impact me. Must be tough at the top, boys!

See you there in 2020, for sure.

The UKTC website had all the results posted up after each round

[Pipey]

Thanks for the comments folks and the kind words. Addressing a few specific points…

Timings - 2hrs 30 rounds was actually the same as last year. It probably felt more relaxed because we had draws up earlier than planned every round due to data entry change. I think basically you had more than 2hrs 30. Which is good!

Rules – these will be changing. Will remain tiered to encourage diversity which I think is essential in a four-player team tournament to prevent a plethora of 4 x Tier 0 lineups.

Trophies – yes these were new, and cropped up serendipitously because the old ones had been discontinued. Really liked them too!

Table numbers – for whatever reason I had no issue seeing this, and was in fact usually rushing last-minute to my table. Perhaps it can be clearer.

Data entry – thanks to Milo and Torsten for working to implement this. Feedback on that primarily for Milo to review as I really have no idea how they did it

Points Scoring and Tiebreaks - this is a complicated one. Firstly, I was following the NAFWC rules so the Average Tier tie-breaker, and side-lining of individual wins was a NAFWC decision. Of course some of this has changed I understand, but the change was too late for us to implement.

One planned rule I wasn’t able to implement related to a minor functionality problem with TojScory (which was otherwise marvellous and I intend to use it again with Torsten’s consent!) – I wanted the draw in Rounds 2-6 to be Points --> Random as NAFC, only adding tier and oppo score after Round 6. TojScory had trouble ranking teams / players randomly every round so I had to switch to net TD+Cas as the first tiebreaker. This perhaps meant that the dominant teams (heavy wins and big Cas yields) all hit the top tables. Doggybag’s “submarine” may have occurred because we were winning relatively narrowly (I think) so our TD+Cas score was modest, so we stayed lower. Makes it look like Doggybag were underserved runners up having risen to the top row in the last round only, but I think this is a quirk of the NAFWC rules / the way the tiebreakers were set up.

Further on the impact of Average Tier – perhaps some teams didn’t fully grasp the significance of that on the final rankings? I don’t know. But a team showing up with Tier 1+1+1+1 or even 2+1+1+1 is basically asking itself to have a better record than all the teams around it. So a competitive average tier, with lower options such as 3s and 2s seemed an essential thing to do when we discussed it, as Straume explains. I know several teams embraced this, including the winners.

Incidentally the individual tiebreaker was Opponents Score after points, as per the rules. So the Tier per se of the teams in the top 20 isn’t relevant, it was their points and better OS.

Points and tiebreakers will be addressed for next year – made more intuitive and familiar, and simplified.

@Jip – the draws and running results were all over the website bbuktc.com updated as we went. Sorry you missed that. Hopefully people will know where to find it in future.

Pitches – once or twice I went cross-eyed trying to find squares in the middle of the pitch Agree that could have been better. Unfortunately I was going off an image file sent to me rather than seeing them in person before the printing was done. We’ve got them going forward unfortunately. But for any further runs I will improve that. Also the additional lines which can be slightly confusing too.

Food – yeah it’s average and also really expensive (about £16 per head out of your £45 or £50). There are sit-down / buffet style options available which are yet more over-priced (IIRC approaching £25-30). Might be an option for next year. Trouble with forking out a big portion of the budget on food is that I’ve got no guarantee it’ll be nice. One to ponder.

Bar and Café – if we’re in that space again then the café needs to be open, agreed. Garrick asked for the bar to be open longer on the Saturday if people want to stay and game, chat. Will look into that / consider budgetary implications. Certainly it’d be nice if it was open for a little while after the games are done (closed at 6pm) as people are probably wanting to get the beers in just at this time.

[Jip]

@Jip – the draws and running results were all over the website bbuktc.com updated as we went. Sorry you missed that. Hopefully people will know where to find it in future.

The UKTC website had all the results posted up after each round

Ah, I assumed it'd be me not paying attention - as you were!

[Chinos]

Adding the races is on the To-Do list, and maybe adding a link to the rosters (if technical feasible)

From a personal point of view I'm not fussed about seeing rosters at time of the draw - for me part of the game is the chat before hand about rosters and skills etc. As someone who doesn't play a lot of tournaments it's a good way to break the ice with opponents and get some nice initial chat going. I'm not sure you'd get the same if both players knew the opposing rosters immediately before sitting down.

Knowing the race before would be useful though, at least so I can get the obvious angst/excitement out of my system before meeting my opponent

I'm generally aiming for midtable mediocrity though, those at the top end may want to do some homework.

[Chinos]

@Jip – the draws and running results were all over the website bbuktc.com updated as we went. Sorry you missed that. Hopefully people will know where to find it in future.

The UKTC website had all the results posted up after each round

Ah, I assumed it'd be me not paying attention - as you were!

I was playing and didn't realise they were available until after Round 5 so a little more promotion wouldn't hurt

[sann0638]

Final standings have been added to the Tableau, so you can identify the rosters of the top finishers etc: https://public.tableau.com/profile/mike ... ublish=yes

[Milo]

When you say "automatically enter the input to be a number field", what are you exactly asking for? Just to disallow non-numeric entry? Or is there an example somewhere on the internet you could show me of what you're looking for?

I suspect he means to set the form input type to be 'number'. Most mobile browsers will pick up on this and offer a numeric keypad for input rather than a full keyboard.

Ah! I'll look into that. TBH, this is my first mobile website. Still learning the tips and tricks.

[Tojurub]

Adding the races is on the To-Do list, and maybe adding a link to the rosters (if technical feasible)

From a personal point of view I'm not fussed about seeing rosters at time of the draw - for me part of the game is the chat before hand about rosters and skills etc. As someone who doesn't play a lot of tournaments it's a good way to break the ice with opponents and get some nice initial chat going. I'm not sure you'd get the same if both players knew the opposing rosters immediately before sitting down.

Knowing the race before would be useful though, at least so I can get the obvious angst/excitement out of my system before meeting my opponent

I'm generally aiming for midtable mediocrity though, those at the top end may want to do some homework.

nobody will keep you from chatting with your opponent about your teams, but a small technical aid (and less paper) might not hurt