Just throwing this out for comments...

[Argonaut]

I think these two tweaks would be an interesting way to improve the competitive landscape of PT:

1. Setup the structure of the pyramid so that there's lots of relegation from the Perfect leagues.

2. Tweak the PP generation from achievements to incentivize climbing up the leagues and disincentivize tanking. Just as an example: you could use Silver as a baseline, and have Iron generate -10% PP, Bronze -5%, Gold +5%, Diamond +10%, Perfect +15%.

The latter clause would have a lot of pros and cons, and I don't know what the right numbers would be off-hand. But I think it would be improve the competitive landscape and is worthy of an analysis at least.

[HRBaker]

Originally Posted by Orcin

Assuming every league were perfectly balanced, what would the result be? Would you have all of the teams bunched around a .500 record, or would some teams win 90+ and some teams lose 90+? Why would either of these outcomes be better than what we have now?

Competition. When half (or likely more) teams make it to the top and find themselves 35 games out of 1st place, it won't be long before they go on to other things. Remember there's a Classic Game we all love to go back to that has kept us interested for 20 years.

[dkgo]

Originally Posted by <Pion>

I'm not really referring to your thoughts directly, but rather using it as a potential springboard into a conversation about Tourney's and whether they help the F2P guy or just end up making prices hard and thus things harder for F2P.

That being said, in regards to F2P I've yet to see a good explanation as to how tournaments might help. I remember conversations in PT19 where people thought Tournaments would give them a chance. But if whales are hoarding cards and others either can't get them, or have to pay the premium other players may price them at once tourney's start, then it's still the PP and/or money that will dominate tourneys (except for those that might be making their purchases early. Once you add in Collections, it seems that all the new features have hurt the AH rather than help. Prices have come down in the AH, but still remain quite high especially at the higher levels. Hopefully I'm wrong and prices eventually get down to PT19 levels, but I'm becoming less confident of that.

I think the theory is that people will find a niche to compete in and that there will be enough options that the whales aren't even going to be able to participate in all of them. Like if your main focus in the game becomes figuring out how to master a tournament of silver hardware heroes. There's a lot of play space there and it would not cost an arm and a leg to compete.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by dkgo

Like if your main focus in the game becomes figuring out how to master a tournament of silver hardware heroes. There's a lot of play space there and it would not cost an arm and a leg to compete.

This is what I think has gone a different direction. Non-Live players at the various levels have always been at more of a premium, but even more so with Tourney's looming in the future. As such, it has seemed that there has been an overall inflation of the value of players making it more difficult for the F2P guys to get them. If they do buy silver non-live players for example, they'll be paying more for them because so many people (whale or not) will want them for the tourney's, they won't have enough to compete in other things. But then maybe they can be happy in the silver tourney's even though it will be harder for them to get the best golds or diamonds. In the end, it seems like across the board, non-lives are running higher than PT19 but I could be mistaken.

[neugey]

+1 to Argonaut's ideas. That plus the upcoming tournaments (particularly the 'salary cap' ones) should give us good competitive balance options.

[HRBaker]

By the way, where are all these cool banners coming from?

[chazzycat]

Originally Posted by HRBaker

By the way, where are all these cool banners coming from?

here ya go: http://www.ootpdevelopments.com/boar...d.php?t=302756

[Dogberry99]

To go back to the question of useful metrics to measure success besides winning percentage and playoff performance...

Every team is given a score after every season. This incorporates both winning percentage and playoff performance, at a minimum. I strongly suspect additional factors help determine our final scores.

I believe that of all the tools we currently have in game, score would be the most appropriate to use for promotion/relegation.

[Argonaut]

IMO promotion/relegation is decided either by team record or playoffs, there's no other way. To make it decided by an arbitrary score or some other method goes against the very spirit of sports.

Teams underachieve or overachieve all the time in real life, and that makes for interesting storylines. Like tiny Eibar being promoted and staying put in La Liga playing against Real Madrid and Barcelona. Or semi-large Newcastle being relegated from the Premier League, and then bouncing back the next year.

The trick is to make promotion attractive to everybody so that it keeps the competitive balance of the PT universe in check. So that F2P team hanging on in the Perfect Level like Eibar gets rewarded for their efforts.

[slic1149]

It is interesting to read the different takes on how to handle promotions and relegations. While the debate has been fun, I do think if there is a truism based on the concept of both the basic gameplay, and it's business model. The concept involves the fact that if someone wishes to spend money they will have more "luck", than if they don't.

[old timer]

Originally Posted by Argonaut

IMO promotion/relegation is decided either by team record or playoffs, there's no other way. To make it decided by an arbitrary score or some other method goes against the very spirit of sports.

Teams underachieve or overachieve all the time in real life, and that makes for interesting storylines. Like tiny Eibar being promoted and staying put in La Liga playing against Real Madrid and Barcelona. Or semi-large Newcastle being relegated from the Premier League, and then bouncing back the next year.

The trick is to make promotion attractive to everybody so that it keeps the competitive balance of the PT universe in check. So that F2P team hanging on in the Perfect Level like Eibar gets rewarded for their efforts.

If the reward for going deep in the playoffs and winning it all were significant enough, then getting promoted because of going far in the playoffs could be a good thing even if you don't believe you will do well at the next level. Currently, the smallish PP reward for winning it all doesn't seem worth getting promoted to a higher level if you know you can't compete there and might get stuck there. But if more teams get relegated AND there's a better reward for going far in the playoffs, then maybe that would work out better?

In other words, if you got more PP for winning it all, then getting promoted and doing poorly and making less PP could be offset by the nice bonus for winning it all. Maybe the rewards for each round of playoffs you make it to should be increased? So instead of getting more PP for being at a higher level, what about just rewarding playoff series wins more than now? What might the downsides to this be?

Edit: Or what if they gave out a certain number of free packs for each series you win in the playoffs?

[KWhit]

Not sure why you think you need a bigger bonus when you win a championship. Winning a title is a reward in and of itself. That's why we play the game.

I was super stoked that I won in Diamond knowing I was not going to be able to compete with the whales in Perfect. But if I'm truly horrible at that level, I'll get relegated in a week or two and then have another chance at winning a title in Diamond. No issue to me.

[Dogberry99]

Originally Posted by KWhit

But if I'm truly horrible at that level, I'll get relegated in a week or two and then have another chance at winning a title in Diamond.

Being truly horrible is not enough to relegate out of Perfect. You only relegate if you are more horrible than every other truly horrible team in your league except one.

[old timer]

Originally Posted by Dogberry99

Being truly horrible is not enough to relegate out of Perfect. You only relegate if you are more horrible than every other truly horrible team in your league except one.

So then should the focus just be on relegating more teams and maybe only more at the perfect level? Would this be enough?

[old timer]

Personally, I dislike knowing that I'll probably be promoted once my team is good enough to compete for a playoff spot. If I make it to the conference championship, then it's on to the next level. But if I'm not dominant yet, why am I being promoted? Once I improve my team enough to compete at the next level, if I make it far enough in the playoffs, I'll get promoted again even if I didn't make it to the championship series and even if my team is not significantly better than others at this level.

So my question is why are we getting promoted if we're not yet dominant? Promoting based on playoff performance is a problem, in my opinion (and some others share that opinion). So what some of us are looking for is a way to deal with this. So my opinion is either don't use playoff performance for promotions or make it so playoff performance can give you a boost at the next level that you just got put into. Otherwise, let me stay at my current level if I'm not yet too strong for the competition at this level.

[Dogberry99]

Another thing that most people lose sight of...

The promotion/relegation process is about more than just the team in question. Uncompetitive teams also give out far more achievements and points than those who can hold their own.

Uncompetitive teams getting stuck for multiple seasons at levels too high for them generate fewer achievements and points while also creating many many more achievements and points for their opponents.

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by old timer

Personally, I dislike knowing that I'll probably be promoted once my team is good enough to compete for a playoff spot. If I make it to the conference championship, then it's on to the next level. But if I'm not dominant yet, why am I being promoted? Once I improve my team enough to compete at the next level, if I make it far enough in the playoffs, I'll get promoted again even if I didn't make it to the championship series and even if my team is not significantly better than others at this level.

So my question is why are we getting promoted if we're not yet dominant? Promoting based on playoff performance is a problem, in my opinion (and some others share that opinion). So what some of us are looking for is a way to deal with this. So my opinion is either don't use playoff performance for promotions or make it so playoff performance can give you a boost at the next level that you just got put into. Otherwise, let me stay at my current level if I'm not yet too strong for the competition at this level.

Problem is you can't define too strong for the competition at that level because leagues are not static and from one week to the other, without being promoted or relegated, your team can be number 1 in relative strength and number 22 the following week.


I don't think you can really have what you want within a pro/rel setting. Upping the number of relegations would help some, but the essence of the issue remains. Pro/Rel needs to have a rigid structure or else the whole system collapses. Rules can't be bent because some teams feel like they don't belong.


If you tweak the math too much to mess with the pro/rel structure so teams don't promote "when they're not ready", then you may as well not have pro/rel at all.

[old timer]

Originally Posted by eldur00

Problem is you can't define too strong for the competition at that level because leagues are not static and from one week to the other, without being promoted or relegated, your team can be number 1 in relative strength and number 22 the following week.


I don't think you can really have what you want within a pro/rel setting. Upping the number of relegations would help some, but the essence of the issue remains. Pro/Rel needs to have a rigid structure or else the whole system collapses. Rules can't be bent because some teams feel like they don't belong.


If you tweak the math too much to mess with the pro/rel structure so teams don't promote "when they're not ready", then you may as well not have pro/rel at all.

Even if you're correct, it still doesn't explain why promoting based on playoff performance is a good idea. Why not just use WPct instead?

[eldur00]

Originally Posted by old timer

Even if you're correct, it still doesn't explain why promoting based on playoff performance is a good idea. Why not just use WPct instead?

No, it should, but the game seem to have been designed with the tenet of good sportsmanship in mind, where everyone should strive to just want to make it to the top to win at the highest level and one way to create that is to make playoff winners to go up the ladder, because winners should be rewarded. I'm not saying the devs all sat at a table and talked about it in those terms, but to me it seems like the most logical conclusion to come to.

[<Pion>]

I think I've seen this movie before, is it a rerun?