How could a new BBRC work?

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sann0638
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How could a new BBRC work?

Post by sann0638 »

From this thread: http://talkfantasyfootball.org/viewtopi ... 81&t=41380

One of the questions was "how could a new BBRC work?"

It would be great if we could have some focused discussion on that in this thread.

- Who would a new set of rules affect (i.e. where would they be used)?
- Who should be on the BBRC?
- How should the rule changes be decided?

Edit after about 2 pages of discussion:
Joe has suggested (on p2) that I missed a nuance of the discussion - apologies if so. This is what Geggster (previously of the BBRC wrote):
Geggster wrote:The thread (ed: the NAF response one) has morphed into a right/wrong of NTBB. What changes people would like to see has merit, but was not the thread's intention.

I am genuinely interested in how people could see a rules committee working in practice (NAF or otherwise) and who it would effect. Can I perhaps steer us back to that?

I consider that Cyanide will do exactly as they want and TT tourney rules seem pretty balanced. So wouldn't a new BBRC would have pretty limited scope?

Are we really suggesting getting the best minds in BB together from TT, Cyanide and FUMBBL, to discuss rosters and core rules, only for Cyanide to ignore it completely and tourneys to have a couple of new or slightly amended rosters? Because if so, a BBRC might only really benefit FUMBBL (and they are more than capable of making any tweaks themselves).

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by Darkson »

1. TT, both leagues and tournaments. If the online versions want to follow suit then fine, but this is a tabletop game.
2. Tabletop players, and players from any online version that intends to follow the rules.
3. I like the old 2 year cycle, suggest rule changes then have them tested for 2 years before looking at implementing them or not. If Fumbbl is happy to help with the testing (which they wouldn't do for the Vault unfortunately) then that might been expanding a bit while any software changes are actioned.

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by sann0638 »

1. Realistically, at this stage the BBRC would have no effect on Cyanide, and no authority over Fumbbl, though Christer has indicated that Fumbbl would support tabletop changes (simplification of the position).

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by Arioso »

1) Tabletop and Online. There are way more BB-Online- Players than Tabletop-Players (which TT-Players simply have to admit). Both leagues and Tournaments. I disagree with Darkson here. There are online leagues who have a very large database of matches for the last years (fumbbl, cyanide etc. - way more matches than local leagues have) so they can and should help.

2) Regarding point 1) TT-Players and Online-Players. Would be good to get Cyanide at least on the table but i simply think they have no interest in this (regarding their contact to the player base in bb1 and bb2 (had some contact with the german distributor already who promised to get me into contact to them but didnt have success...so again it seems they simply have no interest in the tabletop-playerbase and are just talking nice on the TT to get some more customers).

3) Yearly cycle

4) Decided by a comitee

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by Manuel »

1) Tabletop and any other version than wants to join and replicate the ruleset as best as they can. NAF is a TT player association. 100% online players should create their own structures, and ask the developers the changes they want to see.

2)
- Purplegoo, or any similar Titan from fumbbl. If there are equiparable beings in cyanide, one of them too.
- Experienced international coaches from TT tournaments:
Lycos, Farina, Frikipe, Nicodaz and theSage come to my mind now.
- Galak, for his earned respect and experience.
- Jervis Johnson, if there is a way he agrees to take part without his Veto powers. That would put us on good terms with GW, maybe.

3) I think this whole thing should never be initiated. CRP should stay the same forever. That helps keeping the player base and a newcomer will perceive community alive because it's activities, not for changes in the system.

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by sann0638 »

Manuel wrote:NAF is a TT player association.
Interesting.

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by Manuel »

Or has been as far as I know.

My point is: If a certain amount of people want to put themselves in the hands of a company than can do as they want with their product, that is fine. But there is no point in discussing the rules they will follow, as it is well beyond our influence.

What I expect from NAF is, at least, to mantain the tournament structure. I don't see why altering the ruleset could help that.

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by Loki »

I think there is a distinction between TT and online players, or those who play online exclusively would maybe be more accurate. TT players show ther commitment to the game by spending time and money to get places to play leagues, pay 'club fees', buy tournament tickets, spend money on accomodation for tournaments, etc. I'm not saying that online players do not spend some money but there may well be those who got Cyanide for 2.99 and FUMBBL is free (though you should own a copy of the game). An online player can dip in and out which to my mind means that by and large those exclusively online players will tend to be less committed to the wider BB community.

When you are taking about 2+ year cycle for BBRC you are going to need those who are involved to stay involved.

I'm not saying that if hypothetically BBRC were to be formed 'online' players are excluded but how are we to judge the commitment of an online player to being involved and staying involved? Someone putting there money where there mouth is and spending there hard earned cash, leaving there house to travel miles to support the hobby is basically easier to see commitment with.

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by Darkson »

Arioso wrote:1) Tabletop and Online. There are way more BB-Online- Players than Tabletop-Players (which TT-Players simply have to admit). Both leagues and Tournaments. I disagree with Darkson here. There are online leagues who have a very large database of matches for the last years (fumbbl, cyanide etc. - way more matches than local leagues have) so they can and should help.
If online can't (Cyanide) or won't (Fumbbl, at least in the past) then they can't join in on playtesting - surely that's a simple thing to realise? It's not nothing to do with numbers (I've nver seen anyone claim that), it's to do with testing. Online can't test a change if it can't/won't implement the change. It's not rocket science. Hence why I said "If the online versions want to follow suit then fine".

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by HairyPete77 »

I believe that a new BBRC would be a good thing and that having one would help to give focus to the discussions of the type that gave rise to this thread. I think that we need a group to take ownership of the rules of the game and to be the group responsible for maintaining and improving them. It's too late to include the Cyanide version of the game and that would be its own rules branch. The BBRC should define the rules for the TT game and they would hopefully be adopted by FUMBBL (as mentioned previously). I think that given time though the BBRC should be in a strong enough position that their version of the game is one that Cyanide look to for guidance (where license allows etc). Given their position in the TT game, the NAF should operate/oversee the BBRC but I do acknowledge that this would require a more active/proactive stance from the NAF.

Having a BBRC does not mean that rules have to change, just that they could change. If the BBRC wanted to initiate a change in the rules then that process should be open and transparent and include community engagement. The BBRC should operate under a clearly defined framework that ensures that the core principles of the game are kept (I hope) - or at least clearly states them. New versions should have a clear focus and purpose, and not just be change for change's sake or random tweaks. The process of creating a new version should be clear and must allow for suggestions from the community, proposals from the BBRC, testing and feedback before the BBRC make the final decision. Hopefully the process and community engagement will ensure that the rules are well adopted and then after a period of time a new cycle can begin.

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How could a new BBRC work?

Post by Chris »

Cross post...

I think Mike has a point. Cyanide want popular changes. They do seem to erratically reach out. Their ageing rule is sensible in the context of their perpetual open MM league.

I would love it if the NAF could reach out to Cyanide. Find out what they want.

The new BBRC would come out of that.

Offer them free brainpower, analysis and testing to move the rule set forward. FUMBL can test rules before BB2 implements them. I suspect that would be to make teams a better sales proposition and stop the domination of certain teams in their common open and long term league formats. But who knows before we ask?

The rest of the offer would be to advertise Cyanide in NAF events for free (the World Cup will get some coverage, more if people drive PR on it, why not offer plenty of mentions of BB2 to cyanide?) and to provide a new user friendly rulebook to them to teach and rule the game. Use some of the NAF billions to pay Galak to write it up.

In return we get some sensible changes and a unified blood bowl scene.

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by Vanguard »

sann0638 wrote:- Who would a new set of rules affect (i.e. where would they be used)?
Ultimately it will only affect NAF members as they will be the only people who pick it up, so NAF Tournament and League players. There are still BB players who have no affiliation with the NAF and will continue to play which ever version they like. However, I do believe any new ruleset should be freely available to all to encourage it's adoption.
Cyanide will do what they want and while the NAF can reach out to them (share testing results etc) they have no control over them.
FUMBBL (as I understand it) is a recreation of the TT experience and would likely follow NAF example. That said, certain rules are easier to code and accommodate than others, so there may well be technical and workload restrictions.

I would like to see some thought given to the different BB environments. At a minimum this might be recommended optional rules suggested for long or perpetual leagues which have diffenent balancing issues to short league and tournament play.
sann0638 wrote:- Who should be on the BBRC?
A select few. And everybody else. :wink: I do feel that it needs to be a small enough group of people that they can work effectively. There are plenty of candidates within the community, people with years of BB experience, people with games design experience, statistical analysis experience and raw enthusiasm. They can identify the areas of focus and develop new rules/tweaks for testing.
They would need to be supported by the NAF community as a whole. Leagues willing to adopt proposed rulesets to trial and report back on.
sann0638 wrote:- How should the rule changes be decided?
Initially, there would need to be an agreed aim as to what the BBRC should try and achieve, and I suspect this may well be the biggest stumbling block. There are many possible goals:
  • Team balancing to bring all teams closer to 50% win ratio
  • Skill balancing to improve the lesser picked skills and encourage diversity
  • Re-writing/tweaking existing rules to remove ambiguity and errors
  • Team reduction. Streamline rosters to remove multiple elf/undead/chaos teams
  • Team expansion. Approve and create new rosters.
  • Fix broken/boring/Timmy teams.
  • Adjust gameplay to shift the balance towards the passing game
  • Nerf ClawPOMB
  • etc
I would suggest a good starting point would be to produce a new draft of the rulebook with rules clarifications as required and all 24 teams included. Following on from that, pick up from where the last BBRC left off and look at the CRP+ ruleset. This provides a certain level of continuity and reassurance, as the last BBRC broadly had the trust of the community.

Rather than having two rulesets (current and experimental), I would suggest a new ruleset issued each year (at the NAF Champs?) with the amendments approved by the BBRC. These rules would stand for all NAF events from release until the following NAF champs where the new edition would be released.
On this cycle, you would have update A in play for a year while the BBRC worked on update B. Once update B was released, they would move on to update C while also studying a year's worth of data from update A. And so on.
The advantage of this is ensuring a year's worth of data for each release, providing a two year cycle for evaluating but if something was quickly identified as unbalanced it could be rolled back in less than a year.

Long term, what the BBRC looks at and reviews would be down to community feedback. However, there would need to be a certain level of autonomy and leadership to recognise that the vocal comments aren't always the right comments.

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Post by Shteve0 »

I suppose my ideal would entail:

* no changes to existing skills or CRP rules. A stable core ruleset is the best thing we have as a community, at least for tabletop. An attempted transition between rulesets that have changes to rosters and skills would not, in my opinion, do the tabletop game any favours whatsoever
* potentially a couple of new rosters and perhaps new skills every year or two... Let's say three of each, every two years. Have them targetted at different aspects of the community, for example two in tier 1 (one short term focussed, one long term focussed) and a T1.5/2 challenging, counter-intuitive team
* a new section added to the rulebook for 'perpetual leagues'. I acknowledge the issues long term online play is reported to face, but would like to see it seriously explored whether those problems (a) can be proven to trace back to the issues identified and (b) can be solved without altering any other format of the game.

I personally wouldn't touch CRP+ with a bargepole, primarily because of my first point above.

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Re: How could a new BBRC work?

Post by koadah »

- Who would a new set of rules affect (i.e. where would they be used)?

Whoever wants them

- Who should be on the BBRC?

Who has the time to do it properly?
I'd definitely want a Fumbbler. Some prominent Fumbblers are also prominent in the TT world too so that shouldn't be too hard.

- How should the rule changes be decided?

It would be good to be able to do some testing online. That would get more people playing and more games played. That would require available software though. Is PBeM still in business?

- You didn't ask "who shouldn't be on the BBRC?" ;)

It seems to me that this would still only be the "NAF BBRC" or perhaps it should be called the "NAF FFRC" ;)

I don't think that the new rules should move too far away from Cyanide. I don't think that Cyanide will move too far from the CRP.

I am thinking more in terms of small 'corrections' rather than anything revolutionary. Online seems to be where the worst issues occur. Is there even a need for a "NAF FFRC"? Should the online league just fix their issues as they find them (if they dare)?

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Post by TheAzman »

Shteve0 wrote:I suppose my ideal would entail:

* no changes to existing skills or CRP rules. A stable core ruleset is the best thing we have as a community, at least for tabletop. An attempted transition between rulesets that have changes to rosters and skills would not, in my opinion, do the tabletop game any favours whatsoever.

This. Absolutely this.

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