Bronze Tournament Roster Meta

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by LeeD

Exactly. It's beyond ridiculous to have any and all starting pitchers with ERAs above 9, and my team is still winning lots of games (by scores of 14-11). Slider set to quickest hook so that they only give up two or three runs before departing for the showers, and I'm carrying 14 pitchers to avoid bullpen burnout in the final round. It seems as though the pitcher movement rating has been disabled.

Apparently we will see changes sometime this week.

[neugey]

Originally Posted by jeffstified

Success is relative. The top pitchers are successful. They just have awful looking numbers relative to real life.

And, to your large point, yeah, I agree. But, how would you fix it? I can't think of a way. Other collection based games have the same problem, so they can't either.

I think randomizing park factors at start of each tournament would be a way to neutralize a common meta.


For example, one bronze Quick 32-team tournament kicks off with all games played in Coors Field park environment.


The next bronze Quick 32-team tournament kicks off with all games played at Petco park environment.


Some tournaments would thus favor power hitting and other ones pitching and smallball. And no one would know what to build for, causing managers to either build a well-rounded team, or a narrow approach gambling on the right combination.

[professor ape]

Originally Posted by neugey

I think randomizing park factors at start of each tournament would be a way to neutralize a common meta.


For example, one bronze Quick 32-team tournament kicks off with all games played in Coors Field park environment.


The next bronze Quick 32-team tournament kicks off with all games played at Petco park environment.


Some tournaments would thus favor power hitting and other ones pitching and smallball. And no one would know what to build for, causing managers to either build a well-rounded team, or a narrow approach gambling on the right combination.

Most all of us don’t have time to analyze and adjust on a tournament by tournament basis. I’m good with it the way it is and just count on my diligence in collecting data to fine the incremental advantages.

[ubernoob]

Originally Posted by professor ape

Most all of us don’t have time to analyze and adjust on a tournament by tournament basis.

The point is that you can't analyze and adjust it. You'd put a bronze team in not knowing the park factors, those would get randomly selected as the tournament started when everyone's roster was submitted. That was most likely the entire point. To help randomize outcomes and make it so that there's not one clear cut meta card at near every position.

Gives you the choice of building for power, contact, defense, balanced, etc. instead of saying "here's the meta for this tournament, play this or lose". Sometimes the park factors would favor your team sometimes they wouldn't. Just keep it consistent on a per-tournament basis.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by ubernoob

The point is that you can't analyze and adjust it. You'd put a bronze team in not knowing the park factors, those would get randomly selected as the tournament started when everyone's roster was submitted. That was most likely the entire point. To help randomize outcomes and make it so that there's not one clear cut meta card at near every position.

Gives you the choice of building for power, contact, defense, balanced, etc. instead of saying "here's the meta for this tournament, play this or lose". Sometimes the park factors would favor your team sometimes they wouldn't. Just keep it consistent on a per-tournament basis.

Maybe I'm missing something, but one of the early complaints was that everyone was playing basically the same players and the winner is essentially determined by a coin flip. Isn't having the ballpark factors randomized, everyone submitting their lineup, and then the winner is essentially a coin flip based on whose lineup luckily plays well in the randomized ballpark factors? It's still a coin flip...

[ubernoob]

Originally Posted by <Pion>

Maybe I'm missing something, but one of the early complaints was that everyone was playing basically the same players and the winner is essentially determined by a coin flip. Isn't having the ballpark factors randomized, everyone submitting their lineup, and then the winner is essentially a coin flip based on whose lineup luckily plays well in the randomized ballpark factors? It's still a coin flip...

Playing a contact hitting team doesn't necessarily mean you will always win in a park that favors contact hitting.


People's complaints is that there is no variation between rosters. This fixes that and gives a route to different team building success.


It's not my answer, just explaining it how I understood it as I read it.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by ubernoob

Playing a contact hitting team doesn't necessarily mean you will always win in a park that favors contact hitting.


People's complaints is that there is no variation between rosters. This fixes that and gives a route to different team building success.


It's not my answer, just explaining it how I understood it as I read it.

So then it randomizes it so that it's even more of a coin flip before. Don't see how that's an improvement.

[ubernoob]

Originally Posted by <Pion>

So then it randomizes it so that it's even more of a coin flip before. Don't see how that's an improvement.

The coin flip is the park the games are played in.


Not the outcomes of the game or how people build their rosters. Right now it's a coin flip because generally everyone is going to play the same cards.

Like I said, I have no idea if it fixes it or not. Not my idea.

[<Pion>]

Originally Posted by ubernoob

The coin flip is the park the games are played in.


Not the outcomes of the game or how people build their rosters. Right now it's a coin flip because generally everyone is going to play the same cards.

Like I said, I have no idea if it fixes it or not. Not my idea.

Anytime randomization is increased, it increases the coin flip. Though I don't think it needs to necessarily change what is being done now, I will say that I'm looking forward to the change to the Tourney game engine which may end up changing which players are favored. The result is that the old is thrown out and new studies will determine what is best. For the most part, that favors the person who puts in the work at least at first (until people just copy what winners are doing). But then I've always favored games based more on skills/knowledge gained from playing than those that rely solely on a roll of dice requiring no thinking. At least with the tourneys now, the roll of he dice only comes later and at the beginning is the fun of learning. I wouldn't mind if it was changed on a regular basis (not from tourney to tourney, but maybe week to week to give a chance to learn which are the players to change. So if not changed by game engine tweaks, wouldn't mind doing the ballpark tweaks weekly rather than tourney to tourney so that each week a different lineup/strategy can be tracked/studied/learned.

[neugey]

Originally Posted by <Pion>

So then it randomizes it so that it's even more of a coin flip before. Don't see how that's an improvement.

It's an idea, and to your point, people might grow weary of the random park factor selection. But maybe there is the occasional dark horse to make things interesting. Like a smallball team defying the odds and going deep into a tournament with Coors field conditions.


At least with my proposal, it destroys the meta and gets people using different cards.

[professor ape]

Over the past six days, in the Ace Of Bronze tournaments I have played, the nine most used position players have accounted for 39% of the more than 1.3 million total plate appearances. Thirty two players have more than 10,000 plate appearances and 152 have more than 1000 times at the plate. I did not count my teams since that would skew these results. The point is that while there is a meta, there is still a good bit of variety in tournament rosters.

[dbqs]

I think there is still room for other strategies right now but at the moment most people are just in set-and-forget mode knowing there are going to be changes made to the engine. Depending what that looks like, so far this year at least it seems there are a wider range of usable options available.

[frankbama]

There will always be the best players playing on many rosters I guess but of the one graphic on page 1 I ran 2 of those players. I've won and placed enough times that it's made it worth doing so you don't have to run the "meta" to win.

[Mikecouil]

Originally Posted by the doctor

not so much a question as just a rant/complaint because I'm just feeling so discouraged by how last year's version is repeating itself...

something is fundamentally wrong with core game systems in tournament play if the most viable strategy is "use these exact 26 cards and then coin flip your roster against 31 other people doing the same thing". the fact that experimentation, originality, and discovery are so discouraged by this system is just a real bummer. it was the same deal last year in bronze except the meta was "build this exact roster of groundballers and excellent fielders" and now it's just "build this exact roster of home run hitters".

as an aside, i know it's been mentioned before, but man something seems wrong with the offensive environment in the bronze tournaments... effectively impossible for any pitcher to have even moderate success. pretty much every pitcher is constantly hovering around 3HR/9 because of the power meta that is in command right now.

alright, rant over.

I can't think of a single video game where this doesn't happen, going all the way back to Front Page sports and up to MLB the show and madden. This is the copy cat generation, where everyone turns to youtube and simply repeats what successful people do without understanding any theory behind it. This game isn't going to be able to address that any differently or better than anyone else has.

Tourneys are the best part about Perfect Team for a guy like me who just isn't going to drop 1200.00 USD on packs during the season. None of my tourney rosters are meta builds but I absolutely pay attention to what works, what doesn't work, what SHOULD work but doesn't, what SHOULDN'T work but does (what's up with that 48 catcher who just dominates?) etc.

[Mikecouil]

The answer:

Custom tournaments that ban specific players, the same way they do in MTG and other trading card games.

[the doctor]

Originally Posted by Mikecouil

I can't think of a single video game where this doesn't happen, going all the way back to Front Page sports and up to MLB the show and madden. This is the copy cat generation, where everyone turns to youtube and simply repeats what successful people do without understanding any theory behind it. This game isn't going to be able to address that any differently or better than anyone else has.

Tourneys are the best part about Perfect Team for a guy like me who just isn't going to drop 1200.00 USD on packs during the season. None of my tourney rosters are meta builds but I absolutely pay attention to what works, what doesn't work, what SHOULD work but doesn't, what SHOULDN'T work but does (what's up with that 48 catcher who just dominates?) etc.

i understand what you're saying, but this feels like such a fatalistic approach. not to get all philosophical with it, but where would we be if, "meh, this problem's always been around, why try to fix it?" was how people replied to everything?

it seems like this is one of the more common flavor of responses, along with "i don't think it's a problem" (i mean, sure, i'll fully admit this is just an opinion), or my personal favorite "well actually, not everyone is using the same roster (of course! there's lots of normal people playing casually, players that don't have the points to construct the roster yet, etc. those are also the teams that aren't competitive!).

as i stated in my original thread - this was mostly a rant to blow off some stream, and maybe there isn't an answer! it just strikes me as really lame that literally the 2nd day PT was active, I was already seeing forum posts to the effect of "i know what cards i need to be successful in the bronze tournaments, i'm working on buying them now" from so many people.

also, yeah, screw bill salkeld.

[Torgonius]

A randomized park would add a wrinkle of complexity, but the most ardent of players would just make pre-set rosters to load in depending on the park factors.

That will just give them more of an advantage over casual players. And after each park type is 'solved', you go right back to the more-than-casual players having 75% the same rosters for each situation and taking the most packs, while the 1 team, set & forget types get lots of 1st and 2nd round exits.

This isn't to crap on the idea of making tournaments better. That's something we should all be hoping the devs can do, and we should all contribute ideas.

Casual players may eventually get stream packs and challenge mode packs (I'm giving up hope on that), but since those aren't available now, the only way to get packs is tournaments or cash.

[<Pion>]

I would think there is already a bit of randomization built in, at least when it comes to LIVE players. Live players only change once a month, but can alter the players that are sought after albeit maybe not as much as some desire. Any LIVE tourney would have all players that to some extent or another have been altered based on real life performance.

I'm just hoping that if there is a change, that there is some kind of middle ground that is chosen. Fine if developers agree and feel that introducing some level of randomization in the game, but as suggested before, only do it often enough so that those that want to make tourney's something that can increase odds of winning through analysis, rather than luck, can do so as well. Maybe a once a week change, whatever. Just not a coin flip from tourney to tourney.

[ubernoob]

Originally Posted by Torgonius

A randomized park would add a wrinkle of complexity, but the most ardent of players would just make pre-set rosters to load in depending on the park factors.

I'm assuming his point was that you couldn't see the park factors until the sim was running, thus being you couldn't build a specialized team for the factors.

[Torgonius]

Originally Posted by ubernoob

I'm assuming his point was that you couldn't see the park factors until the sim was running, thus being you couldn't build a specialized team for the factors.

There's always the 12 minutes from the time the tournament is set until first sim. Unless thy want to take that away, too.

It's really all moot now given the recent nerfing announcement.

The new meta will be not to play.