2018 World Cup

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Octavious
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Re: 2018 World Cup

#21 Post by Octavious » Wed Feb 14, 2018 7:36 pm

I'd love to hear a convincing argument for them to not be ranked, as in all honesty I can't think of one. These tournaments are a great opportunity for the up and coming players to test themselves against the established old farts of the site, and it's a damned shame if we're going to deny them the full spoils of any success they might have. Especially as quite a few of the old farts only became highly ranked thanks to similar tournament success in the first place.

Besides which, if we're moving into an era in which a player is only considered active if he's finished a ranked game in the last 3 months, if you tie people up with unranked tournament games a hell of a lot of regulars will be dropping off the ranking list.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#22 Post by MadMarx » Wed Feb 14, 2018 8:08 pm

Last year, my first round game got to a point where if I threw a solo to England then our team was guaranteed to advance to the finals. Sure, there were other routes to advance but no other route offered the same guarantee, and since the only reason to play in the first round was to advance to the finals, I threw that game without thinking twice. If it would have cost my GR I still would have thrown it, since I’m a team player, but that’s an example where the tournament format has different goals than a typical game and thus would skew the accuracy of GR.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#23 Post by Durga » Wed Feb 14, 2018 8:55 pm

I agree, when the games become about team playing or strategy that involves multiple rounds then you don't always play to win. But since I don't like this, I think we should make them all ranked so people always play to win instead of trying to meta the system. But at the same time I'm getting stupidly blitz in my current league game and thank god it wont be on my GR.

In conclusion, I have no answer and no preference.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#24 Post by Octavious » Wed Feb 14, 2018 9:11 pm

It's an interesting point. You could argue that if the purpose of the tournament is to provide entertaining competition for site members then adding an element that discourages game throwing is a positive addition.

Regardless, I am very much of the opinion that tournaments being unranked skews GR far more than a rare clash of tournament and GR ideology. Denying players further down the ladder their best opportunities to challenge for the higher ranks, which is what this unranked lark effectively achieves, has a perverse impact on the ratings system. What's the point of being at the top if we're only there because we've kicked away the ladders after we made it?

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#25 Post by Tom Bombadil » Wed Feb 14, 2018 9:32 pm

Yeah - This is a difficult question because both sides of the argument have merit.

I tend to think that tourney's should have unranked games because there is such a meta aspect of them - its not truly a measure of ability as people are playing for different outcomes. For example if your team is struggling you may make riskier plays because you know you need to solo versus 3way draw - and this could blow up in your face. Or as Marx said, there can be merit into throwing games because of the tourney scoring system which would skew GR.

But I do think it is an issue where players who rate well in GR don't play many ranked games anymore making it really hard for new players to move up. I don't have a good solution to this.
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Re: 2018 World Cup

#26 Post by Octavious » Wed Feb 14, 2018 10:11 pm

What I know for certain is that a good chunk of my rating came from various Masters tournaments and events like the ODC and 2014 tournaments. If we are taking the view that tournaments should not be ranked then my current ranking is a complete farce and GR will become even more a meaningless long service award than points are.

We need some consistency, and the only way I can see of having it is to get rid of the unranked fad, or to keep it and disregard the ratings from the time before unranked tournaments started to be a thing.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#27 Post by chluke » Wed Feb 14, 2018 10:47 pm

Sure, it's more comfortable to throw a game to a solo to help your team advance when you don't lose any GR points, but there should be a 'cost' to throwing. Otherwise throwing games could become an overused tactic which tarnishes games. It should be worth some personal pain (in lost GR), if throwing is truly the best strategy for the game and your team.

Plus, when there is 'cost' to yourself for throwing a team game, you also have more leverage to use against all the other players in that game by threatening to throw the game, since they would also lose GR points, and you can leverage that threat (without actually throwing) to get a better result for your team as well.

And most times, hanging on for the most points you can get is also best for your team.

I think all games should be ranked.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#28 Post by ghug » Wed Feb 14, 2018 11:35 pm

Having mixed incentives in a tournament game means people are playing for different things, which is bad for the tournament. I know when I played the Masters, a lot of people prioritized GR over taking risks aimed at getting solos (the only scoring in that tournament), which was very frustrating. Lots for premature draws.

I doubt we would have ever had the century-long world cup game if there'd been incentive to take the draw for all of the players with almost no hope of winning the tournament.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#29 Post by Durga » Wed Feb 14, 2018 11:40 pm

Yeah maybe you shouldn't have century long world cup games?

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#30 Post by VillageIdiot » Wed Feb 14, 2018 11:44 pm

I agree with Ghug on this. This tournament screams Meta, which i mean in the positive sense. It’s structured to be played with cross game scoring strategy taken into consideration and throwing GR into the mix overly complicates it with conflicting end goals. There should only be one goal everybody shares a unified focussed on, having the most team points at the end.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#31 Post by ghug » Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:04 am

Durga wrote:
Wed Feb 14, 2018 11:40 pm
Yeah maybe you shouldn't have century long world cup games?
We have a time limit for that now. Doesn't change that it was really entertaining at the time.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#32 Post by goldfinger0303 » Thu Feb 15, 2018 4:35 am

Uhhh, the century long game was ranked

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#33 Post by Octavious » Thu Feb 15, 2018 1:27 pm

The tournament doesn't scream meta particularly loudly. It is an anonymous tournament, after all, so the amount of cross game action should be rather limited. In all but the rarest of eventualities what's good for GR will also be good for the tournament. It is very difficult to maximise your tournament team points without also maximising your individual GR take.

I think we don't really appreciate the extent to which our ranking system is in bad shape. I think the majority of our members are unaware of its existence. Those who are become frustrated by the mystery behind the mechanism (which Yonni's work will hopefully improve) and the lack of opportunities to advance to the top.

I say again, the ONLY reason I am in the top 10 is because of the ratings boost I enjoyed following successful tournaments. I have my comfortable seat in the sun because of a route we are denying to new members. This is plainly wrong and unless it changes I have no confidence at all in the rankings and I don't see why anyone else should give them any weight either.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#34 Post by Yonni » Thu Feb 15, 2018 2:15 pm

I'd vote for ranked b/c some of us only play a couple games at a time. If we enjoy playing tournaments (and tournaments are unranked), we won't haveany games recorded for GR.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#35 Post by MadMarx » Thu Feb 15, 2018 8:29 pm

Personally, I never understood why unranked games were given as an option. Back in the day we just played games for fun and these rankings were some sort of attempt to quantity past performance, but at the end of the day the priority was to have fun / “play” and the rankings were simply some sort of party trick that was fun to chat about here and there... I may be somewhat biased since often times my performance had little / no affect on my ranking, but conceptually I like the focus being on playing and the idea of ranking being lower down on the priority list, and since I don’t put too much stock in the rankings I try to not let a game being ranked or unranked affect my play...

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#36 Post by chluke » Thu Feb 15, 2018 8:36 pm

It's probably also worth noting that if you get to the point in a game that throwing to the solo becomes your strategy, you probably did not have much diplomatic success earlier in the game. So, maybe you deserve to lose some GR points.

On a related note, any chance that webDip will be able to hide the last login indicator anytime soon. That indicator almost always turns semi-anon games into non-anon, the way players hunt down the last login times. This would cut down on the meta aspect, making each game stand better on its own, and thus correlate best with a "ranked" setup.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#37 Post by goldfinger0303 » Fri Feb 16, 2018 7:50 pm

So, after looking back at the last tournament, there were multiple cases where throwing the solo was in a team's best interest. Notably, the solos by chluke and vixol. So, as to prevent any sort of influence against this best practice, the WC will be unranked. Personally, I wouldn't let GR get in the way of me helping my team - and I know many of you are the same - but we have to realize not all players in the tournament may be like us.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#38 Post by Durga » Fri Feb 16, 2018 8:07 pm

So I imagine it's also going to be non-anon right? Because teams like ghugs that are full of creepers benefit from it since we're all now just admitting that meta is a thing

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#39 Post by Durga » Fri Feb 16, 2018 8:09 pm

Metagaming:
The games are anonymous to dissuade metagaming by teams. Metagaming cannot be completely eliminated from this format, but it is discouraged. Teams are not to collaborate explicitly against another team. However, teams may refer to how other teams are standing on the scoreboard, or are predicted to be standing based on guesses of identity, and make strategic, team-wide decisions on that basis. Any complaints regarding metagaming will be handled jointly by the TD and mod team.

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Re: 2018 World Cup

#40 Post by Durga » Fri Feb 16, 2018 8:10 pm

You wanna discourage meta gaming? Keep it ranked. Sounds like you're endorsing it, which means remove this and make it non anon. Otherwise, it should be play to win not "throw to vixol if it helps your team and fucks over the balkins"

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