Hydra Season 2 OOC Discussion

[MurOllavan]

Yeah, now that you brought that up I agree totally - I had some different thoughts in my mind. Some kind of limit prevents someone from simply amassing points from nothing but losses, I simply wasn't thinking that way. And that is a big leak...

[Andrea Anderson]

Yeah, now that you brought that up I agree totally - I had some different thoughts in my mind. Some kind of limit prevents someone from simply amassing points from nothing but losses, I simply wasn't thinking that way. And that is a big leak...

I'd say points from losses should be capped at 2 or 3.

[Harris]

Yeah, now that you brought that up I agree totally - I had some different thoughts in my mind. Some kind of limit prevents someone from simply amassing points from nothing but losses, I simply wasn't thinking that way. And that is a big leak...

I'd say points from losses should be capped at 2 or 3.

With Kalamere's idea, it's already reasonably capped I think.

The max points anyone could score if they won all their duels 5-0 in a week would be 50 points. 5 for the win, 5 for the score difference. The minimum with 5-4 victories would be 30 points. This is under the assumption that overtime duels won would net 5 points even if the score is 7-6 in 15 rounds or something.

With losses, I would assume the same would generally apply, that it would cap at 4 points for any loss, regardless of final score. So someone that loses all their duels in a week by 5-4 scores would top out at 20 points.

It basically rewards max participation either way. Get your 5 duels (or whatever it is) and you're reasonably contributing. You know for a fact what the weekly points cap is per duelist (50) and it gives you something to shoot for. That way nobody ever has to worry about someone powerdueling them into oblivion. As long as you're dueling, you're contributing. And if you find yourself losing you can always keep dueling to try and win so those losses are completely negated. If you find yourself winning you can always keep dueling as well to win by even larger margins.

[Jake]

Yeah, now that you brought that up I agree totally - I had some different thoughts in my mind. Some kind of limit prevents someone from simply amassing points from nothing but losses, I simply wasn't thinking that way. And that is a big leak...

I'd say points from losses should be capped at 2 or 3.

With Kalamere's idea, it's already reasonably capped I think.

The max points anyone could score if they won all their duels 5-0 in a week would be 50 points. 5 for the win, 5 for the score difference. The minimum with 5-4 victories would be 30 points. This is under the assumption that overtime duels won would net 5 points even if the score is 7-6 in 15 rounds or something.

With losses, I would assume the same would generally apply, that it would cap at 4 points for any loss, regardless of final score. So someone that loses all their duels in a week by 5-4 scores would top out at 20 points.

It basically rewards max participation either way. Get your 5 duels (or whatever it is) and you're reasonably contributing. You know for a fact what the weekly points cap is per duelist (50) and it gives you something to shoot for. That way nobody ever has to worry about someone powerdueling them into oblivion. As long as you're dueling, you're contributing. And if you find yourself losing you can always keep dueling to try and win so those losses are completely negated. If you find yourself winning you can always keep dueling as well to win by even larger margins.

Seconded, thirded, whatever. I like the idea.

[Sylus Kurgen]

I'd say points from losses should be capped at 2 or 3.

With Kalamere's idea, it's already reasonably capped I think.

The max points anyone could score if they won all their duels 5-0 in a week would be 50 points. 5 for the win, 5 for the score difference. The minimum with 5-4 victories would be 30 points. This is under the assumption that overtime duels won would net 5 points even if the score is 7-6 in 15 rounds or something.

With losses, I would assume the same would generally apply, that it would cap at 4 points for any loss, regardless of final score. So someone that loses all their duels in a week by 5-4 scores would top out at 20 points.

It basically rewards max participation either way. Get your 5 duels (or whatever it is) and you're reasonably contributing. You know for a fact what the weekly points cap is per duelist (50) and it gives you something to shoot for. That way nobody ever has to worry about someone powerdueling them into oblivion. As long as you're dueling, you're contributing. And if you find yourself losing you can always keep dueling to try and win so those losses are completely negated. If you find yourself winning you can always keep dueling as well to win by even larger margins.

Seconded, thirded, whatever. I like the idea.

Kalamere and I spoke about his idea a bit earlier in the day. ONe minor point..think about tracking this system. Great if there is a way to automate the duel tracking, but one person trying to pinpoint the 5 best duels of a week for upwards of 37 characters? Especially when there are callers who don't submit their reports until 2 or 3 days after their shifts?

[Kalamere]

I actually messed up a bit in what I proposed. I misunderstood something Sylus wrote and thought I was actually using the scoring method in play and just adding to it a cap. I guess I still have something of a TDL mindset which was sorta similar. Since it would appear I tossed out a whole knew scoring method, I guess I should add more detail, though it's pretty straight forward.

Winner Points: 5 + duel differential, capped at 10
Loser Points: Score in the duel, capped at 4.

I left out any awards for overtime or bonus for shutouts like we would have had in TDL. It does complicate things probably unnecessarilly, since in both cases you're going to get the max points available for your win/loss anyway.

As far as tracking, it's something I might be able to help with. I'm going to test it out today some to see how it works, but apparently there's a google API that will let me call a google spreadsheet from my website, sorta like a database. If it works and if all the duels can be entered accurately onto the spreadsheet, then I can provide you a webpage that'll give you those best 5 duels per duelist and what points they were worth.

* ETA:
If you're opposed to the idea on principle, and not just on logistics, please let me know so I don't waste time trying to simplify something that won't be used.

[Sylus Kurgen]

I actually messed up a bit in what I proposed. I misunderstood something Sylus wrote and thought I was actually using the scoring method in play and just adding to it a cap. I guess I still have something of a TDL mindset which was sorta similar. Since it would appear I tossed out a whole knew scoring method, I guess I should add more detail, though it's pretty straight forward.

Winner Points: 5 + duel differential, capped at 10
Loser Points: Score in the duel, capped at 4.

I left out any awards for overtime or bonus for shutouts like we would have had in TDL. It does complicate things probably unnecessarilly, since in both cases you're going to get the max points available for your win/loss anyway.

As far as tracking, it's something I might be able to help with. I'm going to test it out today some to see how it works, but apparently there's a google API that will let me call a google spreadsheet from my website, sorta like a database. If it works and if all the duels can be entered accurately onto the spreadsheet, then I can provide you a webpage that'll give you those best 5 duels per duelist and what points they were worth.

* ETA:
If you're opposed to the idea on principle, and not just on logistics, please let me know so I don't waste time trying to simplify something that won't be used.

It really is just a logistics issue, Kalamere. The point system of season one rewarded high activity, and there wasn't a very clear way that the casual duelist could keep their casual play and still keep up with those who have a higher dueling frequency. That is what is trying to be corrected this time around.

A scoring system that is balanced for both sides. A dueling cap punishes the hyper duelist by restricting point potential, and the casual duelist may not always have five duels a week depending on circumstance. There is also points to consider from Tournaments and Challenges. Will those be part of the cap limit? Or are they "Bonus" points?

[MurOllavan]

It says capped at 10, why would a 6-0 or 5.5-0 in DoM not count as 10.5 or 11? If a 5.5 - 3.5 win in DoS is a spread of 2, then shouldn't the true cap be 11?

You could have a set of 5 duels coming down to ....5-1,5-0 and another set of duels coming to 5-2,6-0. I don't see if it comes down to that why person one should beat person two in mpdpd terms.

Edited to add: Otherwise I like where this idea is going.

[Rakeesh]

I think that this is a really strong middle-ground for scoring regular duels. It's going to still heavily reward the most active duelists, but anyone who can commit to five duels a week is going to be a solid contributor to their team.

That API isn't just a great idea for this, it's something that could be consistently useful for various fun in the future as well.

I'm still confused about exactly how tournaments are scored. Sylus, could you do a breakdown, an example, for that?

I'm not sold on the bounty system, still. Particularly, what is bothering me is the scoring and possibility for manipulation. It seems to be set-up to become the major deciding factor on what team wins (assuming all teams are going to be reasonably active). Additionally, I'm trying to decide if there's a good way to mitigate the potential issue of bountied duelists avoiding duels with the teams that would benefit most from their losing. Another potential issue could be teams using their bounties to target less experienced duelists to farm points from them (thus weakening the balance of a bountied duelist being able to earn points for their team by defending themselves).

What about something like this ...

There is a total number of available Bounty Points each week, capped at 200 - a max potential of four duelists with perfect regular weeks. Those 200 points are divvied up evenly per team (so maybe it's 50 points a week per team, or 25, etc).

You can only put bounties on the current top five (or some arbitrary number) Hydra duelists. A duelist defending a bounty earns a static 10 points for each defense. If a bounty is collected, the team collecting the bounty steals those points from the team that is being hit by the bounty - and that's that. A duelist can have multiple bounties placed on them at once, but with a cap at 30 bounty points. Any bounty points beyond 30 must be considered a second and separate bounty. Any remaining bounty points on a duelist at the end of the week vanish into nothingness.

This sort of system does a few things:

- It helps teams that are lagging behind in the Hydra Cup by letting them target the best duelists (likely on the best teams) and gain on them using bounties. Of course, they still have to be able to win their duels against good duelists to do so.

- It keeps the top, most active teams from farming weaker duelists to run away with the Hydra Cup.

- It somewhat minimalizes the week-to-week affect of the bounty point system by creating a smaller pool of points available.

- It rewards the top, most active duelists for dueling well and defending their bounties over and over again.


The numbers here could used tweaked probably, as I'm still coming to understand the value of the various ways to earn points, but something like this might serve us better overall.

[Sylus Kurgen]

I think that this is a really strong middle-ground for scoring regular duels. It's going to still heavily reward the most active duelists, but anyone who can commit to five duels a week is going to be a solid contributor to their team.

That API isn't just a great idea for this, it's something that could be consistently useful for various fun in the future as well.

I'm still confused about exactly how tournaments are scored. Sylus, could you do a breakdown, an example, for that?

I'm not sold on the bounty system, still. Particularly, what is bothering me is the scoring and possibility for manipulation. It seems to be set-up to become the major deciding factor on what team wins (assuming all teams are going to be reasonably active). Additionally, I'm trying to decide if there's a good way to mitigate the potential issue of bountied duelists avoiding duels with the teams that would benefit most from their losing. Another potential issue could be teams using their bounties to target less experienced duelists to farm points from them (thus weakening the balance of a bountied duelist being able to earn points for their team by defending themselves).

What about something like this ...

There is a total number of available Bounty Points each week, capped at 200 - a max potential of four duelists with perfect regular weeks. Those 200 points are divvied up evenly per team (so maybe it's 50 points a week per team, or 25, etc).

You can only put bounties on the current top five (or some arbitrary number) Hydra duelists. A duelist defending a bounty earns a static 10 points for each defense. If a bounty is collected, the team collecting the bounty steals those points from the team that is being hit by the bounty - and that's that. A duelist can have multiple bounties placed on them at once, but with a cap at 30 bounty points. Any bounty points beyond 50 must be considered a second and separate bounty. Any remaining bounty points on a duelist at the end of the week vanish into nothingness.

This sort of system does a few things:

- It helps teams that are lagging behind in the Hydra Cup by letting them target the best duelists (likely on the best teams) and gain on them using bounties. Of course, they still have to be able to win their duels against good duelists to do so.

- It keeps the top, most active teams from farming weaker duelists to run away with the Hydra Cup.

- It somewhat minimalizes the week-to-week affect of the bounty point system by creating a smaller pool of points available.

- It rewards the top, most active duelists for dueling well and defending their bounties over and over again.


The numbers here could used tweaked probably, as I'm still coming to understand the value of the various ways to earn points, but something like this might serve us better overall.

Duelist who wins a tournament gets 20 points (equal to winning 4 normal duels). Advancing from one round to the next via winning the duel round is worht 1 point plus the points scored from that duel. Candy def Matt 5-3.5 and advances to round 3. She gets 5pts for winning the duel +1 point for advancing. Round 4, she gets a bye. Only gets 1 point for going on to Round 5.

As to the possibility of manipulation with Bounty, part of me likes that. Likes the idea of one team levying bounties and getting a "Those Mother ****ers! How dare they!" and bounty right back. As a means to keep contention and foster role play, stories, and rivalries.

I understand there is a major inkling to prevent any and all butthurt from being possible, but the competitor in me just wants to say "Suck it up nancy, that's part of the game". Not very even minded of me, or fair, just...something to further encourage heavy competition and drive.

[Kalamere]

There is also points to consider from Tournaments and Challenges. Will those be part of the cap limit? Or are they "Bonus" points?

My intenet was only to apply it to regular dueling. At least as far as the best 5 duels part of it. I really didn't consider using the base scoring for tournaments or anything else to be honest, but I suppose it could be. I don't have strong feelings either way so I leave that to others to hash out.

It says capped at 10, why would a 6-0 or 5.5-0 in DoM not count as 10.5 or 11? If a 5.5 - 3.5 win in DoS is a spread of 2, then shouldn't the true cap be 11?

I just used 10 because a duel is won at 5 points and 5+5 is 10. That said, DoS can go to 5.5 and apparently DoM to 6. I think it might be better to keep the same max value regardless of sport and use the value of 10 we would cap a DoF duel at. Again though, no strong opinion here and it could work either way I guess.

Is the loss cap of 4 good, or should that be adjusted to 4.5?

Also, what about ties? I was thinking those too would be capped at 4.

~Kal

[MurOllavan]

TBH, I hadn't thought about that and don't know. My first reaction was that it wouldn't make sense to cap them, but looking back at your mar 19 7:54 post at the score 5 + differential, 4 for losses/ties that doesn't make sense as a loss/tie could be better than a win.

I was just thinking about ways to potentially help those with 3 duels that week. If they're loss was 4.5 or they had a 6-5 tie or something...but it doesn't really make sense in light of the above.

[Harris]

It says capped at 10, why would a 6-0 or 5.5-0 in DoM not count as 10.5 or 11? If a 5.5 - 3.5 win in DoS is a spread of 2, then shouldn't the true cap be 11?

You could have a set of 5 duels coming down to ....5-1,5-0 and another set of duels coming to 5-2,6-0. I don't see if it comes down to that why person one should beat person two in mpdpd terms.

Edited to add: Otherwise I like where this idea is going.

I just like the simplicity. 5+5. 10 points max. It's a nice round number. Otherwise you get sport variance. DoF would be 10, DoS would be 11, DoM would be 12. I guess the question becomes, would the variance be good? Would it matter at all? It might be interesting with different point caps per sport, add some layer of strategy. But overall, with how complex Hydra is with all the other elements, I think simplicity in as many areas as possible is best.

[Lem DeAngelo]

Is the proposal basically that a duelist's best 5 duels of the week will count, each duel is worth a max of 10 points (5-1=9 points to the winner and 1 to the loser)? If so, here is a quick run down of what I think the first week of Hydra would have looked like last year based on that scoring system.

Forces of Nature
Siofra – 3, 6, 6, 6=21
Jacen – 7, 2, 7, 7, 6, 7=34
Rachael – 4, 6, 3, 6=19
Rhiannon – 8
Maggie – 6, 2, 8=16
Eregor – 1
Jedi – 4, 9, 9, 5, 8, 1=35
Total: 133
Week 1 WoL All sports: 16-8-1, 67%

CrushBob
Kalinda – 2, 3, 2, 8, 9, 1, 3=25
Matt – 3, 4, 4, 3=14
Sarah – 6, 2, 9, 3, 6, 6, 4=31
G – 4, 4, 7, 4, 2, 2=21
Tass – 6, 8=10
Total: 101
Week 1 WoL All Sports: 9-17, 35%

Beat Down
Candy –8, 8, 3, 6, 1, 4, 8, 8, 7, 9, 4, 3, 2, 1, 7, 4=41
Seirichi – 9, 8, 4, 8, 7, 8, 7, 3=40
Mur – 2, 3, 6=11
Geko - 1
Total: 93
Week 1 WoL All Sports: 15-13, 54%

Wrecking Crew
Tical – 8, 6, 7, 4, 6, 3, 9, 6, 8, 3, 3, 9, 7, 3=41
Myria – 3, 3, 4=10
Kheldar – 8, 1=9
Fio – 6
Jay – 5
Total: 71
Week 1 WoL All Sports: 11-8-1, 58%

Great of XanthXanth – 6, 6, 8, 7, 1, 6, 8=35
Totall: 35
Week 1 WoL All Sports: 6-1, 86%

I wasn't sure what to do with a 5-5 tie, so I gave each person 5 points. I rounded down on all half points. It was difficult to determine what should truly be considered Hydra because of the Hydras, half-Hydras, several duels were reported as Hydra even if 1 person wasn't in Hydra (which I thought was half-Hydra?) So if I saw any duel with a Hydra player, I counted it as long as it wasn't against a teammate or alt of a teammate.

Crushbob is in 2nd even though they lost more duels than they won. One way to try to even that out would be to add a weekly W/L % modifier.

Forces of Nature: 132*1.67=220
Beat Down: 93*1.54=143
Crushbob:Total: 101*1.35=136
Wrecking Crew: 71*1.58=112
Great of Xanth: 35*1.86=65

There could also be additional weekly points for the team that had the best showing in each sport. Using the currently proposed hydra scoring system of only counting the best 5 duels per dueler, and looking only at each individual sport:

Beat Down would win DoF and DoS and Forces of Nature would win DoM. I can break that down in another post if wanted.

If awarding 50 points each week per sport as an example:

Forces of Nature: (133*1.67=222)+50DoM=272
Beat Down: (93*1.54=143)+50DoF+50DoS=243
Crushbob: 101*1.35=136
Wrecking Crew: 71*1.58=112
Great of Xanth: 35*1.86=65

[Kalamere]

I haven't used this in my testing on the tool I'm putting together, but here's the google doc Sylus had for last year's Hydra. It might let you more easily pick out what each duel was worth in terms of hydra / half / not / whatever. That said, in the revised system here (at least the way I've proposed it) ALL duels would be worth the same potential value, whether or not they were hydra duels.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc ... 3TkE#gid=5

As to the modifier for WoL, it's an interesting adjustment. I would make one proposed alteration though. I'd say award a bonus to only those teams who are over 50%, though make it a smaller bonus. Part of the goal is to take away any thought of "crap, I suck this week, I better not duel for fear of hurting my team." Your system sorta does that, but maybe we can take an edge off it and if a team is already under 50% then a duelist might as well get in there and add to their point total, even if they can't get the team over that hump.

For the actual point we could stay with the percentage system and do, say, half of what you've proposed. eg: 60% WoL gives a 30% bump in points. (though that even seems maybe a touch high). Or eliminate the need for calculations and do a flat point increase. eg: WoL > 50% = + 10 points. WoL > 75% = + 15 points, WoL > 90% = + 20points (or just a flat +15 to teams better than 50%)