Talk Fantasy Football

speedingbullet wrote:Thanks to everyone who has posted thoughts and questions so far. Keep them coming please. Responses and thoughts from the committee will follow over the next day or two.

Thanks Jim.

While I find myself naturally agreeing with Phil on this one, I would be interested to hear an advocate for the changes to the ranked picking.

One question I do have in relation to this, is why use the Peak ranking as opposed to the average for the year? I would have thought the average would give a better indication of ability over a coach who, say had a good run at the start of the year but whose results then dropped off. Having said that, I ay have missed something obvious so would be happy to be proved wrong!

Barney the Lurker wrote:

lunchmoney wrote:Whilst replying to me you have ignored the point I was trying to raise. Are other races to be ignored?

Sorry to butt in, but I think Dan was mainly raising a point about your question as opposed to answering the question itself.

No issues with butting in

Happy with your answer, thanks Shows my question can be answered without the need to attack the way I asked it. Again, thanks.

Barney the Lurker wrote: We all know there are better and worse races, and they wanted to cut off some to get a more accurate result, and ensure that you can take stunty without worrying about tanking your ranking. As you say there are other teams that could be discounted, but I think we then start getting into subjective territory whereas the stunty races are a good cut off as we all know their limitations and accept they are under the curve.

I think the cut off is more because there is a specific "valid" reason for taking stunty races - the stunty cup - in a way that there isn't a "tier 3 cup". But anyway, tangential to the debate (which I'm going to be an interested observer of). I particularly enjoyed Geggster's "half decent Scottish team", as that's all we ever get!

I thought you were Welsh now

lunchmoney wrote:

Wulfyn wrote:It is hyperbolic to the extreme. So extreme in fact that it entirely invalidates any point you are trying to make.

In any walk of life if you are trying to prove a general point, try to ignore outliers rather than making them the crux of your argument.

I get it, you dont like me or anything I write (at least it seems that way as you never say anything nice in reply to me, just attacks, but that's not the debate here).
Whilst replying to me you have ignored the point I was trying to raise. Are other races to be ignored?

I don't know you, so can't say that I either like you or dislike you. What I do know is that people in the UK BB community that I don't know well I have tended to get along with well once I got to know them, so I see no reason why we couldn't either. I'm not really capable of disliking someone I've never even had a conversation with.

My counter argument was not personal, I simply strongly disagreed with what you wrote. Using outliers to make a case is also a disappointly convincing argument to many people, which is why I felt it right to attempt to cancel it immediately. But it was countering your argument - not you as a person. I'm not sure why you think it would be otherwise. The internet is a strange place.

As to your second point about taking into account other uncompetitive races - well I think it is fairly open that I agree with that part. I mean I made the exact same argument myself, with Nurgle, Underworld, and Brets as my examples. Similar arguments have been made by Goo and Geggles. I'm not sure why you think I disagree here?

Barney the Lurker wrote:why use the Peak ranking as opposed to the average for the year? ....

The peak vs average vs end of period and also the removal of the worst teams from the rankings, demonstrates, I think, at least the concern that people will take these seriously and how the committee is attempting to reduce manipulation. So that's well thought out - as the committee say, peak does mean folks don't just sit on a ranking (although towards the end of a qualification period, they may do so in order to have a high starting point next period), but average does similar I guess, if possible.

But if it is agreed that results with stunties should be discounted, then I think it follows that results with teams just above stunties in the grand scheme should be discounted too or at least revalued.

The End of Year Invitational Golf and Tennis events invite on rankings because we can see that results at different events can be accurately assessed - and everyone is incentivised to bring their A game each week. It wouldn't work if Rory McIlroy decides to use a bag of purely 7-irons for a few weekends (but if he uses purely a putter instead, that's totally discounted?) or Federer thinks he'd rather play left-handed at the Miami Open. That might seem a push but BB does this with coaches every weekend voluntarily somewhat limiting their chances of round wins in the pursuit of their newly painted lols team or playing around the 26 - and not just with stunties.

If qualification is deemed necessary, and perhaps it is, I'd like to see a global ranking weighted to the racial ad/disadvantage. Is that possible? Of course, just because someone bosses with Tomb Kings, that doesn't in itself mean they are of particular value in an event that doesn't need Tomb Kings but at least we've removed the incentive to only go top tier.

What I see is still possibly the most well thought out qualification process I have seen over all the years this has been in the ether (so again, good job) - and I don't doubt it would provide a very strong, objectively-scrutinised team. I just worry what it brings to the choices we make during the qualification period (ie the other 51 weekends).

That's great, thanks Paul. I think I'd misread the Rankings and somehow thought that the average ranking was used. I'd agree that the Peak would be better than using the rankings an a particular date.

I enjoyed reading the proposals and generally all seems very logical to me.

In terms of discounting stunties I get the reasoning behind it. Is it going far enough? Surely for TE only tier 1 teams are taken, at a push the odd tier 2? If this is the case then isn't it faster to just count the races which may be played? As has been alluded to if I read it right . . . someone may be brilliant with Tomb Kings but so what? That race would never be used on TE so why include them in the ratings?

Anyway, enjoying the debate.

Generally agree, but a thought has just occurred to me that the more races you cut from the data, then the smaller the data pool is and would this then further increase the unreliability of the data?

I'm a little confused with the rankings part. Are we not saying we start with "vanilla" base each year? Why would you hold over results from previous years?

I think it's worth remembering that the fashion for tiering seems to be ever-increasing. When I first saw the Polish rules, I had a good and serious think about Vampires. I don't know how much additional slimming outside of Stunties you'd want to do, with the direction of travel in mind.

besters wrote:I'm a little confused with the rankings part. Are we not saying we start with "vanilla" base each year? Why would you hold over results from previous years?

The rankings are there whether TE uses them or not, Jim. They don’t reset at any stage so everyone will have a ranking at outset that was their ranking at previous year’s close. This will be their baseline with positive results increasing their peak.

Geggster wrote:

besters wrote:I'm a little confused with the rankings part. Are we not saying we start with "vanilla" base each year? Why would you hold over results from previous years?

The rankings are there whether TE uses them or not, Jim. They don’t reset at any stage so everyone will have a ranking at outset that was their ranking at previous year’s close. This will be their baseline with positive results increasing their peak.

Hi Paul, I thought from what was being said about excluding stunties that it was just the raw data being used, not any ranking calculation, is that not the case then?

Having had a bit of time to think I guess I'll chime in with my tuppence worth. Firstly thanks to the committee chaps for all their time and effort, a very polished set of proposals!

I'm going to vote Yes for Document A. This all seems like housekeeping and generally positive stuff, and with nothing at all controversial here there isn't much for me to say.

I'm going to vote No for Document B. It won't be a surprise to many of you that I agree with almost everything Phil and Paul have said in their posts. But I'll try to express it in my own words for those who are reading this still unconvinced. This is about as good an attempt at a qualification system as I could have imagined. Better than anything I would have come up with! I am really impressed by the amount of thought that has gone into the proposal. But - and it is a big but - it is still a qualification system.

My concern here is not Team England. Frankly even the worst case scenario of picking a rubbish TE pales in comparison to the larger consequences of having such an overarching framework to the English tournament scene. It isn't about the weekend of the Eurobowl itself, but how it will impact behaviour and enjoyment for the other 51 weekends of the year. Particularly - and this is the really key bit for me - for people who have no interest in Team England and even those who have no idea that the qualification system exists. Others have made more detailed points above, but there will be a race towards Tier 0 teams. People are going to care about this ranking, even those who haven't previously expressed any interest in playing for TE. You can see that already in this thread: people love their numbers. Many, many more people than just the TE regulars will be playing with the qualification ranking in mind. It will hang over ever game, every turn, every dice roll all year round. In March, in June, in September. Nobody will get a weekend off, there will be no more fun tourneys with Nurgle or a funky star player. Or at least there will be a lot fewer.

And this will have an impact on everyone, even the people not bothered by the rankings. Suddenly every tournament they go to will be packed to the gills with Undead and Wood Elves, Dark Elves and Lizardmen. And what is the one piece of feedback that comes back loud and clear from the English community? They don't like Tier 0 and they really do like diversity of teams. For every one comment complaining about transparency in TE selection I have seen hundreds talking about diversity of teams or 'boo powergamers'. So I ask, what are we trying to achieve here? If we want to hear the voice of our community surely we need to listen to the one thing they tell us over and over again?

As a minor addendum, I don't think this is even good for TE itself. I've always thought the reason TE have done so well is that we had a core of coaches who travelled a lot around Europe looking to be challenged. Playing different coaches with different styles is a huge benefit when a Eurobowl comes around. You learn more when you lose games than when you win, and we should be encouraging our coaches to improve by seeking out strong opponents who are likely to beat them. None of these things are compatible with maintaining a high ranking to hit your qualification number.

TL;DR: Do you want to play Wood Elves and Undead every game? Because this is how you get to play Wood Elves and Undead every game.

Interesting to see that those at the top of the ranking are the ones arguing against it! As they would be the ones to 'gain', the fact that they are against it is telling.

My thoughts when I read doc B were, 'right. How can I game the system to up my ranking.' I then was sad as this would reduce my fun, but I do really want to play for TE again. (It would also reduce my opponents' fun as I was planning on taking goblins to my next two tournaments!)

Lastly, interesting to see only 3/5 of the committee keen on doc B.

I am minded to vote against doc B at present unless I hear convincing counter argument!