A suggestion to improve racial variety in perpetual leagues

[dode74]

Winning as defined by the BBRC was having the highest win% overall.

The high TV sprint, while fun, is skewed towards teams which are able to maintain high TV more easily (higher AV teams), and in turn towards teams which are better able to beat teams which are able to maintain high TV more easily (CPOMB teams). I'm not saying you're wrong to care about it, but I think it is important to understand (and I am sure you do) how skewed that environment is. The same is true of the low-TV sprint. That said, I'd be interested in seeing a mid-TV sprint (a jog?) for TVs from 1400 to 2200.

[Jimmy Fantastic]

The problem with nerfing claw is that you then have to buff the other mutations or Chaos/Nurgle rosters to retain any semblance of balance.

[juck101]

Its good to see that the stats seem to back up the theory that Black Box is most popular with people who don't want to take cas, but do want to dish them out - rather than people who want to win as much as possible.

That's a bit of a jump. The stats back up the theory that the more a team plays in the Black Box, the more it causes casualties.

Without wishing to misquote I do think the more long lasting teams survive in the box BY CAUSING pain. I think the lower dwarf and orc wins (than prior expecatation) just shows this particular common game at high end will always go against them vs chaos killers. I certianly find in the cyanide game its common to see certain races at higher team ratings. Often I see choas but rarely skaven or ag teams. Im fairly confident in my skills and team development and play elves alsmost exclusivly. I cant remember a high ag vs ag game by chance in the way it connects games.

The more cas a team causes the bigger chance of survival. That also is a direct link to wins I think. Frankly if vamps and other such rarieties played over 1800k I think they would lose more. As the meta game chances so does the powerfull races so its harder to see dwarfs not winning as much when in fact the smart player picked a chaos team instead of thier beloved dwarf choice for example which skews stats.

I do agree with the tone of these changes and dont think anything is incorrect as such. Just pointing the statistics dont tell everything for me. I see 'winning' perceived races are played more and more. I see lossing races played less. This does not quiete play out in the stats and I would still use judgement over 'cold' numbers as frankly orcs used to win everything in fummbl. Maybe if the crowd follow the leaders then the numbers also account for this but my gut reaction is they dont

good luck smeborg - great thread of thought

[dode74]

The more cas a team causes the bigger chance of survival.

That's less cas taken.

That also is a direct link to wins I think.

Not true, as I showed on the previous page.

I see 'winning' perceived races are played more and more. I see lossing races played less.

Perceived and actual are different here. In reality, teams which win more are not necessarily played more, but teams which cause more and take fewer cas are.

I would still use judgement over 'cold' numbers

I sincerely hope you are not an engineer of any sort

[garion]

The problem with nerfing claw is that you then have to buff the other mutations or Chaos/Nurgle rosters to retain any semblance of balance.

You keep banging that same drum Jimmy and seem to be being ignored and I am with you but only to a point, I do not think nerfing CPOMB would be as detrimental to chaos as you think. Yes some Mutations do need improving without a doubt - VLL, Extra Arm, Prehensile Tail I'm looking at you. Also FA and DP should never have been split in two but anyway - I would rather see all chaos teams take block, Guard or MB as first skill then Mutation as their second depending on which type of player they are building. But as said the mutations are on the whole not good enough to do that.

Chaos do have St access throughout the team, so they can spam guard and MB, they also can make great use of tentacles against elf teams, its my feeling that if more chaos took 4 tentacles players they would have a far far greater win ratio against Elfy teams, which is where they sometimes come unstuck when relying on the CPOMB combo. Also they would probably take more Tackle as well instead of focusing so heavily on that one combo which again would help them out against elfy teams.

That said nerf CPOMB and the problem then would be when you face Dwarves and Orcs again. Claw + MB would help on this front to some extent, but the Orcs would in all probability over power the Chaos.

I say do away with stupid Pile On, it is a daft rule and according to the fluff it is illegal anyway.

Keep Claw the same, bring back RSC except make it a straight +1 to injury and let the two stack with MB. Then you would have a nice skill combo for dealing with high Av without having to roll around on the floor all the time (there are numbers for this combo somewhere, i will try and find them) It would take 3 skills too. Then make Prehensile Tail work against Leap and Dodges, make FA and DP one skill again, and improve fouling again etc... etc...


I think part of the problem here is people are trying to think to narrowly. Why try and fix an inherently stupid skill (both fluff and game playe wise), when there are many other options throughout previous editions that were better ideas that just need tweaking.

[DoubleSkulls]

The problem with nerfing claw is that you then have to buff the other mutations or Chaos/Nurgle rosters to retain any semblance of balance.

That's only true if you want their win% to remain unchanged. As Chaos & Nurgle have a pretty good win percentage so a small drop in the effectiveness of Claw seems unlikely to make them uncompetitive at high TVs - i would expect it to lead to a small drop in the win%.

Dode has already shown that people are selecting teams because of lethality & toughness, not because of win%, which would seem to imply that people build teams for lethality & toughness, rather than win%. So it may be that people are actually making sub-optimal skill selections (in terms of win%) and this tweak may actually cause them to win more because they are less focussed on building killer players and become more focussed on development to win games. I don't think that's necessarily true, but its something to consider.

[DoubleSkulls]

Keep Claw the same, bring back RSC except make it a straight +1 to injury and let the two stack with MB. Then you would have a nice skill combo for dealing with high Av without having to roll around on the floor all the time (there are numbers for this combo somewhere, i will try and find them) It would take 3 skills too. Then make Prehensile Tail work against Leap and Dodges, make FA and DP one skill again, and improve fouling again etc... etc...

If you look here - http://ecbbl.doubleskulls.net/injury.php#33 - I've got the stats for stunty & MB, which works for Claw/RSF/MB - its about a 22% casualty rate, which is quite close to CLPOMB if you only ever use PO for stuns (20.8%).

I actually quite like the idea of increasing the diversity of Mutations being taken so if we ever made wholesale changes to the rules again it would be something to look at. Allowing PTail to affect Leaps makes sense. Its a small boost to a skill and helps counter war dancers.

I don't necessarily think this would improve the win% of teams with mutation access much though, because presumably they aren't taking the skill because they've got better options. So bringing them up to equivalence with those skills wouldn't affect win%, just skill selection. Its only if you make them better than the other skills it would have an impact.

IIRC Piling On has had that "fall on your opponent" mechanism since at least 3ed. So its hardly some new fangled nonsense that got added recently.

[dode74]

My random suggestion: If Tackle is used to bring the target down, PO cannot be used. Kinda makes sense from a fluff perspective, and would drastically boost the survivability of elves.

I missed this before but it would probably achieve the aim of reducing the cas caused by high AV teams while not changing the cas taken by them. My concern is the effect on the win% of the agi teams (elves in particular) caused by increased survivability. An improvement to fouling (+1 to the AV roll for the fouler) would help address that issue, I think.

Yes some Mutations do need improving without a doubt - VLL, Extra Arm, Prehensile Tail I'm looking at you.

Extra arms? Really? Don't most Chaos teams take that for a ball carrier pending a +AG roll?

[Jimmy Fantastic]

Very bad coaches take extra arms.

[garion]

My random suggestion: If Tackle is used to bring the target down, PO cannot be used. Kinda makes sense from a fluff perspective, and would drastically boost the survivability of elves.

I missed this before but it would probably achieve the aim of reducing the cas caused by high AV teams while not changing the cas taken by them. My concern is the effect on the win% of the agi teams (elves in particular) caused by increased survivability. An improvement to fouling (+1 to the AV roll for the fouler) would help address that issue, I think.

Yes some Mutations do need improving without a doubt - VLL, Extra Arm, Prehensile Tail I'm looking at you.

Extra arms? Really? Don't most Chaos teams take that for a ball carrier pending a +AG roll?

Extra arms is a complete waste of TV in any arena of the game. Sure Hands is a better pick for short length leagues and long to perpetual leagues can wait for stat increase players. It is a noob pick really.

I personally dont like Hitos idea either, elves and zons are the teams that need protection from CPOMB least of all. It is how it effects players like Black Orcs, Humans undead players etc. so badly that really irks me.

IIRC Piling On has had that "fall on your opponent" mechanism since at least 3ed. So its hardly some new fangled nonsense that got added recently.

I know, but I have never liked the skill, and in second ed it was illegal. Luckily in LRB4 my personal favourite edition. It was so weak it was roundly ingored except on the odd big guy or Chaos dwarf blocker. Plus fouling was powerful enough to deter people from doing it at all really.

If you look here - http://ecbbl.doubleskulls.net/injury.php#33 - I've got the stats for stunty & MB, which works for Claw/RSF/MB - its about a 22% casualty rate, which is quite close to CLPOMB if you only ever use PO for stuns (20.8%).

Thanks for the link, that looks much better to me personally and it doesn't leave players prone which means they can be hit back.

[dode74]

I personally dont like Hitos idea either, elves and zons are the teams that need protection from CPOMB least of all.

I agree, but we're trying to reduce the lethality of high AV teams while ensuring they still die as much. The obvious way to do that is to nerf their ability to hurt low AV teams in some manner, and Hito's suggestion works due the the lack of dodge (pending doubles) on high AV players. That would need to be balanced by an overall improvement to the ability to hurt low AV teams, and improving fouling does just that.

It is how it effects players like Black Orcs so badly that really irks me.

Works as intended on them - they are supposed to die. Your issue is the time taken to reskill them.

[garion]

I personally dont like Hitos idea either, elves and zons are the teams that need protection from CPOMB least of all.

I agree, but we're trying to reduce the lethality of high AV teams while ensuring they still die as much. The obvious way to do that is to nerf their ability to hurt low AV teams in some manner, and Hito's suggestion works due the the lack of dodge (pending doubles) on high AV players. That would need to be balanced by an overall improvement to the ability to hurt low AV teams, and improving fouling does just that.

It is how it effects players like Black Orcs so badly that really irks me.

Works as intended on them - they are supposed to die. Your issue is the time taken to reskill them.

Its not just them I listed other players too. But yes I agree they should die. But not quite as easily as they currently do, fluff and the races style means they should be tough to hurt and at the moment it is too easy for too many races and players to hurt them I think. Which is why i like the idea i put forward to above which DS provided the stats for.

[dode74]

I've just had the season 6 data for FOL and looking at the correlations for the 45,000 games I have there shows a similar pattern - the correlation is strongest between casualties (caused and negative against received) and games played. On looking only at the T1 teams (there are no T1.5 teams in Cyanide) there is actually a slight negative correlation between games played and win%. This is arguably skewed by the lower TV of teams in general on FOL as we've only been going a little under a year.

[Smeborg]

Thanks, dode and others, for your most interesting analyses and thoughts.

I have nothing but admiration for the BBRC and their previous efforts. I doubt that the game needs radical reform moving forward. I am sure that smaller tweaks will do the job just fine. Thus I am attempting to think subtly rather than narrowly.

Here are some other underlying ideas behind my proposal:

- Disallowing damage skill combinations while still allowing them to have value when stacked on a single player potentially avoids legacy problems if a league wants to change rules mid-stream.

- Once damage skills are uncoupled (not allowed in combination) then over time each skill could be modified without causing waves. For example, personally I would like to see the link between ST (or ST difference) restored to Piling On. But that would be too much to attempt in one go, I suggest.

- Once the ability to take and receive damage becomes a little more even (we are talking of a subtle balance here), I suspect that coach preferences (team choice, development strategy, play style) would all change. Thus, for example, AG teams might survive better, but win less.

I apologise for not being more present on this thread, I have a medical condition at the moment which means I have to ration my internet usage quite heavily. I follow the stats, I'm most grateful for them, I don't have the ability to crunch stats myself, as while my natural numeracy is good, my maths/stats training is close to nil.

All the best.

[Jimmy Fantastic]

For a big online league such as FUMBBL there will always be a lack of variety to some extent because no matter what you do to try to balance stuff one team will be better at surviving/killing stuff than all the others and therefore will be the most numerous.