MVP vs Experience Rolls

[neoliminal]

I don't think that's correct. As I've calculated it, the average player has 4 EXP after 6 games. He needs to roll a 5 or 6 to gain a 5th EXP, so that should take 1-3 games, on average. Figure 5 EXP by 7-9 games, so 13-15 games for 6 EXP.

My numbers jive with this, but then ageing becomes worthless afterwards.

You have a 1-in-36 chance of even getting a chance at ageing. That's 7-9 games becomes 25-27 games before their first ageing roll, and that's likely to just MISS A GAME!

John -

[Acerak]

One more note: on a per-player basis, this ageing might seem slow. It would take 18-19games, on average, for a player to miss a game after he's a Pro.

But ask yourself two questions:

1. What are the CURRENT odds for a player to take an ageing effect?
2. What weight should you assign the "miss next game" factor?

My bet is that players don't age this fast currently. I base this on an empirical observation: given 16 players with 5 or more EXP, I should expect 4 ageing effects every 9 games. I haven't seen anything close to that on a regular basis on 2K1 Blood Bowl, and I doubt anyone else has, either. And why not? Because if you don't gain skills, you don't age under the current rules. And even if you miraculously came up with all sorts of skill rolls every game, you'd never average so many missed games.

-Chet

[GalakStarscraper]

I didn't comment on this thread because I didn't see the big value with the original concept.

HOWEVER ... if you mix Manu's rules with Chet's newly posted link to aging ... okay now THAT I like a lot.

There are a lot of folks that hate aging because of the "skill penalty" effect. It kinda like in the United States with the "marriage penalty" where your taxes are more jointly if you marry someone rather than just live with them. Its just doesn't sound or feel right.

This system brings back a game based aging. I even like the gift of Pro for 6 EXP.

So I like the whole package .... BUT I don't feel you made the aging penalty stiff enough Chet.

If I have a full roster of 16 players than if aging only happen on doubles 1s only one player gets effected every 2.25 games (or 4 every 9 games).

I think I like the 4+ roll for aging a lot better. 1 player effected every .75 games (or 5 players every 4 games) would make a lot more sense to me.

The other change that I could live with is if you changed the 2-7 MNG to Niggle and made the failure roll a 1 or 2. Then one player would truely age every 1.125 games (or 8 players every 9 games).

Now before anyone thinks this too harsh ... run the numbers.

I just ran the following problem set through a stat evaluator.
I start a Halfling team with 16 players. And let's just say EVERY player makes it to 6 EXP by game 13 which is the high side of curve most definitely. Now let say no one on my team EVER gets injured and that I'll retire a player as soon as he pick up ANY aging from the aging roll. How many games will I play before I retire the 16th halfling???

Answer: 68

Breakdown:
14th game: Halfling 1 retired
15th game: Halfling 2
16th game: Halfling 3
17th game: Halfling 4
18th game: Halfling 5
20th game: Halfling 6
21st game: Halfling 7
23rd game: Halfling 8
25th game: Halfling 9
28th game: Halfling 10
30th game: Halfling 11
34th game: Halfling 12
38th game: Halfling 13
43rd game: Halfling 14
52nd game: Halfling 15
68th game: Halfling 16

Now to me this is a fine progression and somehow 68 games to have my last starting player get hit doesn't seem too fast of a progression (also I realize that there is a stiff ramp from game 14 to 25 BUT most teams won't have STARTED with 16 player so this effect will not be the same for a normal team ... so my recommendation would be the following based on running the numbers:
============================================

1. Replace MVP with EXP. A player rolls a die after each game he's played; if he beats his EXP total, he gains an EXP. A roll of 1 always fails, and a roll of 6 always succeeds.

2. Once a player acquires 5 EXP, he becomes a Pro and acquires the Pro characteristic. It's removed from the list of General skills.

3. Once the player has become a Pro, his career is at its height; after that, it starts to come down. If he rolls a 1 for any EXP roll, he must roll another D6. On a second roll of 1 or 2, he must roll immediately on the ageing table.

Now this ageing table is the same as the current one:

Code: Select all

2-8   Niggling Injury 
9     AV-1 
10    MA-1 
11    AG-1 
12    ST-1 

No MNG effect for Niggling Injuries earned through aging.

===========================================

Based on running the numbers I'm very sure that this would be just fine. Neo might still think its too soft, but I think that the winnings table and the FF table are doing the bulk of the work on TR capping, so you just need this table to set up and clean up the SPP monsters which it will do nicely.

Oh and I'd still DEFINITELY make Niggles rolled at the start of each half with these rules as the MBBL is testing.

Thoughts?

Galak

[Snew]

Galak,

What did you change except to make the aging roll on a 1 or 2?

[neoliminal]

1. What are the CURRENT odds for a player to take an ageing effect?
2. What weight should you assign the "miss next game" factor?

1. I don't think the current odds are high enough. You're in the right direction, but you aren't hitting the mark.

2. Miss next game is obivously like having a niggling injury, but as we have already seen, this isn't a deterant to keeping a player.

[neoliminal]

http://www.oldboysleague.com/bbadmin/team3.php?team=23

I'm going to run numbers on each player and we'll ignore the previous ageing results.

# Name Position SPP's GP Age Effect
1 Zarg QB Thrower 61 23 No Effect
2 Blur Jr Blitzer 5 4 No Effect
3 Ram Blitzer 74 26 No Effect
4 Pow Blitzer 23 26 (-1 AG)
5 Zam "Dwarfslayer" Blitzer 46 26 No Effect
6 Smash Troll 54 26 No Effect
7 Bash "Chaos" Black Orc Blocker 19 26 No Effect
8 Crush Black Orc Blocker 18 26 Missed Game 16
9 Grunt Black Orc Blocker 14 17 Missed Game 15
10 Warrior Black Orc Blocker 25 15 No Effect
11 Smug Lineorc 11 26 No Effect
12 Bug Lineorc 4 26 No Effect
13 Thug "Anklebitter" Lineorc 33 24 Missed Game 8, 17, 19

Analysis:
The Ageing effects suggested by Chet are unlikely to have forced the firing of any players. The only player severly hurt by the effects was #4 Pow, who lost an point of AG. Looking at his stats, it's clear that this would not affect him. It would certainly not affect him in his roll as blitzer.

Every player on the team would be a Pro. I can hardly imagine the effects of having an entire team with Pro. This team wouldn't be quite as affected... it has 7 RRs.

Problems:
Not tough enough on players. This team, IMO, needs to have some players retiring, but it's not. It also has a butt ton of money, which it should be spending on buying new players. It's got 3 Star Players, one verging on Super Star. Now is the time ageing should be kicking in... where's the ageing?

[Lucien Swift]

be careful not to jump on the increased chance of aging, you're not looking at a situation where you should be thinking of one playerr's odds of sitting out a game, you should be looking at the probability that after a dozen or 20 or so matches, you'll have 6-12 players capable of aging... the odds of one specific one of them aging, and thus missing a game, are low... the odds of any one of them aging, however, is high...

how many players on a veteran team would you feel comfortable forcing out every week? one, two, three? combine the odds of one or two aging players missing a game with the odds of one or two normally injured palyers missing a game, and you get a situation where a veteran team, despite having 16 roster players, spends a lot of time with a short bench... is that how you want veteran teams to run? maybe it is, i'm not sure i don't want it to run that way...

...i think the winnings table is the _real_ balance to the league system, aging is icing on the cake that turns over players... don't put too sharp-a teeth on aging, as teams could wind up in a situation where they simply cannot recover after a certain point... you can't ask a team making no money to retire a bunch of players to lower their tr so they can afford to replace them slowly... aging should be a seasoning, cash is the meat... an aging system where one player per game per team is affected is valuable, but one where the odds are good that two or more could get hit, that risks breaking the league system...

... personally, i'm waiting to see the numbers run through more than 10 or so iterations, but i wonder if the 4+ second roll is going to really cause some trouble simply because it almost guarantees at least one missing player per week on a veteran-heavy team... normally, i'm all for this, what i'm afraid of is that the reality will be that there will be two or three aged players per week in reality... and this could lead to veteran team having an undue slap every game...

i think the experience system is a fabu idea, it gives a lot of people "what they've wanted" more or less... but don't forget that aging is supposed to compliment the overall system of control, it is a cog in the machine, a part of the whole... try not to think in terms of this being the whole...

[neoliminal]

Having players miss a match IS NOT going to convince people to fire them. Since that is the actual goal of ageing, I could care less how many games are missed using this system.

Don't lose focus on the fact that after a simulated 26 games with a team, I wouldn't have fired a single player. Not one. If you aren't getting a player you would fire after 26 games, somethings not working with the ageing system.

What's the point of an ageing system if it never forces a retirement? I'm not interested in "missed games". Players simple need to get replaced over time.

[manusate]

I´ve been thinking about it for quite a while, and I must say that I´m not sure this is a good idea, Chet.

First of all, I don´t like the idea of all players getting Pro. This is not an improvement IMHO, it´s a quite dramatic change to the way the game is played and teams are developed.

Secondly, I´m still favouring a fixed event table, rather than more random rolling on an ageing table (old or new). If things are to get more complex, let it be for a good reason (game balance or general hapiness). Whe comes to rules, the less bulky, the merrier methinks.

So, why not try something like this:

Code: Select all

1. Replace the MVP column with an EXP column. This represents the player's EXPerience rating. 
2. At the end of each match, roll a D6 for each player. If the D6 roll is higher than the player's EXP total, then the player gains 1 EXP for playing the match. A roll of 6 always succeeds, and a roll of 1 always fails. 
3. Each EXP point is worth 1 SPP. 
4. Once the player has reached his 6th EXP point, his career is at its height; after that, it starts to come down. To represent this, each EXP point beyond the 6th will give the player a +1 to his injury rolls.

This way you would get a true ageing feeling. The injuries by themselves would make the work with no need of some extra table.

Time to put those spreadsheets of yours to work...

[Lucien Swift]

games with a team, I wouldn't have fired a single player. Not one. If you aren't getting a player you would fire after 26 games, somethings not working with the ageing system.

i think it's fine, and i worry about teh numebr of players missing because i see the opportunity for aging to become something better than famage to players...

there's the distinct possibility that the system can find more purpose and effect in shortening veteran benches than culling veteran rosters... the desired effect is balance of high-end teams, the outcome is high-end teams that can't field one of their greatest strengths, numbers....

look at it like this, you've gotten a lot of stick over the concept of yanking people's stars out from under their noses... how many people have come one here and said "i hate aging, my league doesn't use it..." or "not my palyers, buster" etc... face it, a few weird visionaries like you and me like the idea, the masses aren't amused... bb has been about amasing power for a long time, that power has been the draw to the game all this time, the development, the improvement, the edge... play long enough and you get a really good team... aging throws that on its ass and says instead, 'play long enough, you get a bunch of crippled geezers' and i have to tell you, i saw the need, i enjoyed the "realism" but it hurt me too... i missed those guys... i'm just a little more machiavellian than the average coach is all...

the beauty of this new aging is that, when added to the rest of the system, achieves the meta-goal of checking veteran team strength first and foremost... that was the point of the league changes... this system gives fewer players on gameday to veteran teams, giving mid-table teams a more even fight and newbies that glimmer of hope... isn't _that_ really teh point?

knocking out players to retirement wasn't a goal, it was a mechanic. some of us wanted to see old players go away, i still do, but i don't want them leaving en masse, and i don't want them leaving only to enforce ceilings... and i still beleive the game takes care of its own in this regard, veteran players have pushed their luck, they will get killed eventually... how many skills have you ever seen a player earn? last time i checked even us hard-core campaigners had only ever seen 5 skills on a player in a tabletop league (leave those olbbl and bobba guys out of this, that is not normal)... players either die or coaches get antsy to move on long before the griff oberwalds show up...

...so, knocking those mediocre stars out of the roster was a mechanic of overall control, did we really care that much about them? the point was to level the playing field for disparate teams, and to ensure that there was a soft cap on overall team growth... cash handles the capping more than retirement ever will, aging wasn't winning many hearts and minds outside of the idealist circles, i know my local "normal players" are grumbling about it...

all this leaves us in a weird spot... did we male chicken it up? probably... what can we do about it? change the purpose of aging.

don't worry so much about aging being a way to kill players, no one wants to retire their stars anyway, even in a perfect world, that's kinda lame, even to a simulation freak like me... let them die on the field like nuffle intended...

aging, in this system, has another purpose, and another manifest... handicapping.

baseline your thinking and look at the numbers again... and answer my earlier question: how many players should a veteran team not have available for an average game?

with old stars on the bench nursing one game sits, your soft cap gets a little lower... teams up agains thte cash ceiling, teams giving up a few handcap table rolls (we'll talk about _that_ bag of worms later), and now teams giving up numerical superiority are going to be balanced a lot better... sure, the 12 or 13 guys the vet team has on hand are going to be better on a 1-1 basis than anything the rookie squad has to throw at them, and the vets should still win... but if the rooks get a few good pops in, clear that short bench, maybe you get teh odd upset...

wasn't that the point?

should that be the point more importantly?

i'm beginning to wonder...

[Lucien Swift]

oh, and for the record, i've always hated the pro skill, it doesn't work "right" within the mechanics of the game, and i honestly don't like giving it out to all these players... but i appreciate the sentiment of giving before takingaway... i also appreciate that as slowly as this system takes away on a per-player basis, there doens't need to be much reward, especially a reward that is more frequently used than the negative feedback will come into play...

an aging player has at least 1 skill... it's not like we're penalizing rookies here...

[neoliminal]

Yes, I can see this working, I'd like to see which games those players I would fire were put into that position. In almost every case where there's a -1 ST, I'd fire the player, so what games did those come up in.

(BTW, I wasn't ignoring your post, just responding to Chet's first.)

[Dangerous Dave]

I haven't gone through this in a lot of detail... however, I have the following thoughts:-

1 I don't like the addition of Pro at all. IMO Pro is a very useful skill - having a 50% chance of rerolling most rolls plus having a 50% chance of rerolling block dice is very useful. In addition if most players had this ability, it would slow the game down a lot. Also does anyone really consider a player with 6 SPPs a Pro?

2 The whole thread seems to be on how long a player lasts. To me this is not that relevant. The whole point of aging (or whatever you want to call it) is to stop team development at a certain level. As the BBRC said at the last rules review, the whole is a package. The reduced winnings table combined with the extra niggles, the Handicap Table and aging together slow development and affect individual games.

This seems to boil down to:-


Do we want teams to peak at a certain TR? or

Do we want teams to lose experienced players more frequently?


IMO the current method achieves the first not the second. The current trend though seems to be that we want to lose players more quickly. If this is the case, then the winnings need to go up so that players can be replaced. My view is that a lot of injured (niggled) players are not replaced since Coaches cannot afford to replace them. Do we really need a number of low skilled players aging prematurely?


Therefore, rather than have all these changes to aging, it seems to me that if we want to increase player turnover, we need to increase the effects of blocking. This will then be felt more harshly on low AV teams - so to compensate, the replacement cost for low AV players needs to reduce. Secondly, the match winnings will need to increase to allow Coaches to replace injured players for all teams.


However, I think most Coaches enjoy trying to get a player to 5, 6 or 7 skills. Personally I have never got that far - I run too many teams locally and play one a week. However I think that this should remain an achievable goal.


So, given a choice between low winnings and players that can age but may last, or a revolving door policy where players are regularly booted out after 1, 2 or 3 skills, I definately prefer the former.



Dave

[DoubleSkulls]

So following on from my previous post an average player wont reach 6 EXP for 19.7 games.

I don't think that's correct. As I've calculated it, the average player has 4 EXP after 6 games. He needs to roll a 5 or 6 to gain a 5th EXP, so that should take 1-3 games, on average. Figure 5 EXP by 7-9 games, so 13-15 games for 6 EXP.

OK, there was an error in my original maths (I forgot the 2nd roll was still a 2+) so it takes a few games less than I thought.

It takes 6/5 games to get your 1st EXP, 6/5 games to get your 2nd, 6/4 to get the third, 6/3 to get the 4th and so on. That makes 5.9 games to get 4 EXP, 8.9 games for 5 EXP and 14.9 games to 6.

These figures are low estimates (because of the very small chance it takes 10 games to get your 1st SPP) but should be good enough to reach decent conclusions about pace.

What's proposed does move the link of aging from skills to games played. However this means players that acquire skills more slowly suffer more from the changes than those who acquire skills quickly, or if you prefer players who acquire skills quickly benefit more from the change.

I thought the purpose of aging is to reduce the number of highly skilled players in the game and make teams contain more rookies. This just punishes coaches who manage to keep their team alive, so is in effect a penalty on high Av teams.

Ian

[manusate]

This What's proposed does move the link of aging from skills to games played. However this means players that acquire skills more slowly suffer more from the changes than those who acquire skills quickly, or if you prefer players who acquire skills quickly benefit more from the change.

I thought the purpose of aging is to reduce the number of highly skilled players in the game and make teams contain more rookies. This just punishes coaches who manage to keep their team alive, so is in effect a penalty on high Av teams.

You are right, Ian.