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Topic: League Feedback (Read 34769 times) |
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Fritzlein
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Arimaa player #706
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #180 on: Jul 28th, 2010, 2:38pm » |
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on Jul 28th, 2010, 12:24pm, megajester wrote:Yeah, you're right, you have been consistently arguing for a budget reduction.
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But a week is probably too short to discuss something as complex as budget calculation, expecially when you feel as if you've already given your two cents worth and I didn't include it. |
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The best thing about giving advice that isn't taken is that it is a one-way bet. Poker players call it a freeroll. If things go well, I can always claim they would have gone better had my advice been taken. If things go badly, I can say that I told you so. I can't lose. 
Hopefully you won't now change your mind and take my advice, because then if things go badly it will be my fault. We only get to discover what is wrong with my ideas if they are actually implemented. So please, whatever you do, don't listen to me. That could only end badly for me.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 28th, 2010, 2:39pm by Fritzlein » |
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Adanac
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Arimaa player #892
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #181 on: Jul 28th, 2010, 4:56pm » |
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Fritzlein made some pretty strong arguments against the new rule. It doesn’t make much sense to penalize a last-place team that is trying to throw a match for the benefit of a title contender. But one alternate scenario where this new rule could be useful would be with a team with 4 available players, for example, rated 1850, 1600, 1450, 1400. If the captain feels that the team is going to finish 0-3 regardless of who he selects then the logical option is to select the three lowest-rated rather than the three highest-rated players and save the extra 450 rating points for future rounds. The problem is that the captain hasn’t given any thought to which pairings would be most exciting for the fans – competitive pairings are supposed to be part of the appeal of the WL. Of course, in this scenario the team cannot possibly reach the rating floor. There’s nothing that can be done about that, but at least we’re providing the captain with the incentive to make a “proper” roster selection.
There’s a flip side to this situation, as my Ring of Fire has unfortunately learned this week. If there are only 3 players available then a team can get hit with 3 huge rating mismatches plus a point penalty. But those are the breaks – maybe in the future we’ll have a larger player pool so that the chances of a team being forced into an unfavourable lineup will become significantly reduced.
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| « Last Edit: Jul 28th, 2010, 4:56pm by Adanac » |
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Hippo
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #182 on: Jul 29th, 2010, 2:48am » |
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For the future AWL seasons ... I like the idea of overcost penalisation points be given to opposing team. I like it much more than per round limit.
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megajester
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #183 on: Jul 29th, 2010, 5:36am » |
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on Jul 28th, 2010, 2:38pm, Fritzlein wrote:
Hopefully you won't now change your mind and take my advice, because then if things go badly it will be my fault. We only get to discover what is wrong with my ideas if they are actually implemented. So please, whatever you do, don't listen to me. That could only end badly for me. |
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Ah but now I'm gonna! MWAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
Seriously, I think we could perhaps lose the minimum budget limit, because that's the only thing that's really throwing a spanner in the works and it doesn't work to prevent what we're trying to prevent. I see Adanac's point, but I don't think it justifies his team being penalized 1 point for no good reason.
As I think I explained in an earlier post, players' average ratings are higher than last round so using the same budget calculation results in a higher budget.  I don't think it's worth it to risk the unforseen consequences of lowering the budget mid-season when we already have the round maximum in place to stop the likes of Europa playing skittles with the opposition. But please feel free to outline precisely how you would change the budget calculation for the next League.
And by the way, whatever happens I take full responsibility, whoever the suggestions initially come from. That's only fair if I'm going to be the benevolent dictator around here. 
If there's no objection, in accordance with the rules I would like to officially ask RonWeasley for his approval for the following amendment:
"Rule 6.3.3 is adjusted as follows: Captains may not overspend or underspend in any one round (ie. spend more or less than 1/6 of their total ratings budget) by more than 700 points. Exceeding this limit will be penalized by the deduction of 1 league point, with an additional point deducted for every 350th rating point. This only applies to the initial roster submitted; if a substitution causes this limit to be exceeded no penalty shall be applied.
Note: This means that each round the captain's target spend is 5850. His upper spending limit (see 6.3.3) is 6550, his lower spending limit is 5150.
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knarl
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Arimaa player #1648
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #184 on: Aug 2nd, 2010, 10:27pm » |
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Gday,
I just wanted to point out a little typo on the AWLS round 1 wiki page, so someone with an account can fix it.
It list RoF as winning two and losing one, which conflicts with the actual results which are correctly listed further down. We actually won one and lost two.
Cheers,
knarl.
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RonWeasley
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Harry's friend (Arimaa player #441)
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #185 on: Aug 3rd, 2010, 7:16am » |
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on Jul 29th, 2010, 5:36am, megajester wrote:
Ah but now I'm gonna! MWAHAHAHAHAAAAA!
Seriously, I think we could perhaps lose the minimum budget limit, because that's the only thing that's really throwing a spanner in the works and it doesn't work to prevent what we're trying to prevent. I see Adanac's point, but I don't think it justifies his team being penalized 1 point for no good reason.
As I think I explained in an earlier post, players' average ratings are higher than last round so using the same budget calculation results in a higher budget. I don't think it's worth it to risk the unforseen consequences of lowering the budget mid-season when we already have the round maximum in place to stop the likes of Europa playing skittles with the opposition. But please feel free to outline precisely how you would change the budget calculation for the next League.
And by the way, whatever happens I take full responsibility, whoever the suggestions initially come from. That's only fair if I'm going to be the benevolent dictator around here.
If there's no objection, in accordance with the rules I would like to officially ask RonWeasley for his approval for the following amendment:
"Rule 6.3.3 is adjusted as follows: Captains may not overspend or underspend in any one round (ie. spend more or less than 1/6 of their total ratings budget) by more than 700 points. Exceeding this limit will be penalized by the deduction of 1 league point, with an additional point deducted for every 350th rating point. This only applies to the initial roster submitted; if a substitution causes this limit to be exceeded no penalty shall be applied.
Note: This means that each round the captain's target spend is 5850. His upper spending limit (see 6.3.3) is 6550, his lower spending limit is 5150. |
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I haven't worked through all the technicalities associated with this, but removing the lower limit penalty seems like it gives teams more flexibility. The risk of abuse seems low, given that the people here are trying to optimize fun rather than spite.
Therefore, as LD, I approve the removal of the lower spending limit.
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aaaa
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Arimaa player #958
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #186 on: Aug 28th, 2010, 1:23pm » |
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I'm in the process of finding new, optimized parameters for the WHR rating system. I understand that if these were to be adopted in the middle of this competition, the resulting abrupt change in players' ratings would possibly prove to be disruptive and raise issues of fairness. Perhaps some sort of ad hoc accommodation might be possible here, e.g. a flat adjustment of budgets based on how the average rating of a participant would differ between settings.
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ocmiente
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #187 on: Sep 13th, 2010, 5:04pm » |
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For next season, can we reduce the penalty for losing due to a time out or resignation?
If a team simply doesn't show up, that would justify not getting a point for playing; but some budget penalty would be more appropriate in games like the forfeits we've seen this season.
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megajester
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #188 on: Sep 14th, 2010, 4:28pm » |
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on Sep 13th, 2010, 5:04pm, ocmiente wrote:For next season, can we reduce the penalty for losing due to a time out or resignation?
If a team simply doesn't show up, that would justify not getting a point for playing; but some budget penalty would be more appropriate in games like the forfeits we've seen this season. |
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I agree that the current system is too heavy-handed. It never occurred to me to link the budget with anything other than the deployment of players, but this might be a good way of creating some sort of incentive for players to play to the finish instead of abandoning it half-way through.
I don't know what others think, but a chess-style "1 point for a win" seems boring...
Heyyy here's another idea! Maybe we award bonus points for a speedy win. Example: 2 points for a win, with 1 bonus point for winning in 31-40 moves, 2 points for 21-30, 3 points for 0-20. Now that would be an incentive to keep playing on, wouldn't it?
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| « Last Edit: Sep 14th, 2010, 4:58pm by megajester » |
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aaaa
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Arimaa player #958
Posts: 768
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #189 on: Sep 14th, 2010, 5:18pm » |
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on Sep 14th, 2010, 4:28pm, megajester wrote:| Heyyy here's another idea! Maybe we award bonus points for a speedy win. Example: 2 points for a win, with 1 bonus point for winning in 31-40 moves, 2 points for 21-30, 3 points for 0-20. Now that would be an incentive to keep playing on, wouldn't it? |
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A similar discussion came up with the Continuous Tournament and again I would like to state that one should not want to severely compromise the integral nature of a single Arimaa game by having such a valuable secondary objective where the focus is on game length. Players have developed different playing styles, which differ in how long games tend to last with them, and these should not be encouraged or discouraged on the basis of anything other than how well they win games.
I wouldn't go much further with this than adding a low-impact tiebreaker in the same vein as the concept of goal differences in several sports, here highest number of moves in all lost games minus number of moves in all won games.
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novacat
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #190 on: Sep 14th, 2010, 9:56pm » |
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If someone is purposefully losing on time or resigning, then they can just as easily allow the opponent to win by goal (as is often done on the turn before a forced goal). If people are not purposefully losing based on time, they are likely trying to come up with a move to continue playing.
As such, I don't think there is a need to penalize anyone for losing on time (especially if it is due to technical difficulties). I suggest the points stay the same and a forfeit be defined as not showing up for a game and having no substitute to fill in.
I think other incentives would be better suited to motivate players to finish their games. For example, teams that finish all games could earn the title "Enduring Elephants," while teams that finish less than half their games end up the "Wreckless Rabbits." Feel free to come up with all the animals in between. 
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| « Last Edit: Sep 14th, 2010, 10:03pm by novacat » |
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aaaa
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Arimaa player #958
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #191 on: Oct 9th, 2010, 11:40am » |
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Another idea would be to only have no-shows cause a forfeit of a game point and let the least number of timeouts+resignations be the first tiebreaker.
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Nombril
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Re: League Feedback
« Reply #192 on: Oct 11th, 2010, 2:11pm » |
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Two suggestions for rules changes before the next season, following up on some of the above suggestions and also one of my observations:
1. timeout penalty:
I think it makes sense to consider no-show forfeits to be in a different category from timing out. The current 3-1-0 system could still be used, with forfeits going into the 0 point column but time outs going into the 1 point column.
As for what column resignations should go under: there is a culture to 'finish' games here, but often people just suicide their pieces (or make 1 step, or step a rabbit as far forward as possible, etc) when they are ready to resign. So I would lean towards a resignation going into the 1 point column, since there really isn't a penalty for these other informal resignations.
If the above is adopted, I would modify aaaa's suggestion and have time-outs used as the first tie breaker. It seems most teams' roster selection isn't often based on strategy, but rather who is available to play. So having budget as the first tie breaker is almost like a random number generator. (OK, it does still give some indication of who 'out performed' their ratings, but with only 18 games per season, I think there is too much noise in this number to be accurate.)
2. Substitutions and Forfeit Timeframe
aaaa ran into the situation today where his opponent didn't show up on time. He was in an uncomfortable situation of wanting to be a good sport and keep the game window open, vs. wanting to help his team win and just claim the forfeit and cost the opponents the 1 point for a forfeit.
In our first season discussion about rescheduling a forfeit, I'd like to point out the following line of thought:
on May 27th, 2010, 4:14pm, Adanac wrote:| There’s no way we should allow substitutions after 15 minutes and yet also allow games to be re-scheduled at a future date. If a 2000 rated player fails to show up for a game, his 1500 rated team-mate could save the team by stepping into his place. Win or lose, under the original rules, he could at least feel that he’s helping out by preventing the loss of a forfeit point. But why bother? If we allow a game to be re-scheduled then the lower rated player will feel that he’s doing a disservice to his team by negating the possibility of a re-match (obviously the original player had a much stronger chance to win 3 points). So we’ll have all the spectators ready for the scheduled game, we’ll have two eligible players and yet no game will occur because we’ve created an incentive for a re-match rather than an incentive for a substitution at the scheduled time. We should have substitutions or re-scheduled games, but not both. |
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I suggest that we can substitute 'forfeit' for 're-scheduled' in the above, then we have a very similar, if not identical, situation. Why should I substitute for a higher rated player if the opponent is willing to wait longer for my stronger teammate to show up? Also, in a team event, I think it would be more comfortable to take decisions like this out of the individual players hands.
Since the gameroom already has an automatic 15 min grace period, I suggest that a forfeit be automatic after 15 min. A substitution can be prepared in the meantime, but should NOT start until after the 15 min window has run out. Probably a 5 min window (so 15-20 min after the original scheduled time) would be sufficient time for the game with the sub to be started.
I'm looking forward to the last game of the season tonight, and hope we can continue to smooth out the rules and keep having fun with the games and league concept!
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| « Last Edit: Oct 11th, 2010, 2:13pm by Nombril » |
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