Hydra 2013 Post-Season Discussion OPEN

[Sylus Kurgen]

When working on the scoring system, I’ve found it best to try to follow the KISS method religiously. Keep it stupid simple. A great deal of us can crunch the numbers for the scoring or point values, but that all becomes moot when someone new to the game starts to feel their head swim because they don’t understand what’s being discussed. This limits the conversation to only those with a mind for math.

I think it would be useful to step back and look at Season 2 from a Goal perspective.

At least in my talks with Sylus, Hydra has always had goals, including:

- Promote regular dueling.
- Promote tournies and challenges.
- Promote cross-duel play.

From the perspective of Season 2, and those goals, one could argue that all of the goals were met, and the system worked pretty much as designed.

The beauty of "Best 4" was that it encouraged people to keep dueling. If you haven't got a good 4, you *could* try to get better duels. Conversely, if you already had a good 4, you didn't have to stop dueling (which meant you were available for *other* people to get some points). ETA: Just touching back on the idea above...one of the consequences of forcing people to accept a worse duel, is that people would be even *more* likely to be selective about who they duel.

The goal was to promote more dueling. Best 4 was well-suited to that goal.

As we saw....it had some problems. Notably burn-out.

A shorter season might be the remedy to that. A 4 week season with a 1 week break in the middle might accomplish that. Or maybe there are other ideas that would work just as well. But...when proposing rule tweaks, I think it would be useful to look back at what the goals of Hydra were, how well did the system meet (or not meet) those goals, and then review whether that goal is still desirable, and if so, is there a better way to accomplish it.

Just as a final example, if one of the goals was to encourage challenges, then it met that goal too. However...maybe that wasn't a great goal. If so, then perhaps it's good to get rid of that. If on the other hand it is a good goal, then maybe we just need to tweak the value of the scoring.

I’m going to try and respond to everyone’s voices, but I want to start with Jake. A lot of his response here touches on my own views. From game mechanic to image, Hydra is meant to encourage cross-dueling, tournaments, and challenges. The scoring system needs to be sustainable, balanced, and still encourage dueling in all three sports, even dueling outside of someone’s comfort zone.

Hydra Season 2 met a lot of the goals I had in mind, but there were problems. There are always going to be hiccups, speed bumps, and obstacles because we’re all flawed and what we create will have inherent flaws.Our goal is to limit or make those flaws manageable. In reflection, the point differential system works when one is faced with a limited field of opponents (1 a week as with TDL and IFL). When faced with unlimited number of opponents, the differential system meant players felt forced to duel more frequently in order to stay competitive. The differential system wasn’t broken, per se, just not suited to the way the season was designed. Is it still usable? Yes, just not with an open ended field.

Another thought is to remove the point differentialsystem for solid scoring. Points earned with an individual point cap of 20 points (4 wins, 6 losses, or any combination between.) There is a presented Max Points for the week, meaning no individual can go over that, that’s 100pts per team for the week. Our goal still needs to be Team Performance > Individual Performance.

Hard point values give players a goal to compete towards, they can see how many points they need to score and know what they have to do. Season 2, no single duelist could score more than 40 points a week (double point weeks and challenges aside). This meant teams were locked in at a maximum point cap of 200. (40x5).

I’ve seen farming brought up a time or two now, but that is an element to dueling that has been in the system since I’ve been dueling. Want to pad your WoL? Go pick on some lower ranks and mod-bomb your way to a win. It is something I think everyone can say they’ve done at least once in their career. (As always general you).. Rank is not indicative of skill and should not be thought of in that way. Anyone can pick and choose their duels to where they only fight those they have a high win ratio against to make Rank.

Rings of Honor is a Player Vs Player game and setting. Anything discussed needs to show consideration for those who choose not to compete in Hydra and those who love it. In Hydra Season 1, the point mechanic was 10 points for beating Hydra Competitors, and -10 points for losing to Hydra Competitors. 5 points for beating non-Hydra and -5 for losing to Non-Hydra. As with that system, some duelists dug themselves and their team into a hole. It didn’t work and we saw serious point gains. The 4/2 system presented by Rakeesh, and with Kal’s adjustments is that same system, without the Negative Point values. At least in my mind it looks like the point system from Season 1 with obvious tweaks.

I am very new to Hydra, having started dueling entirely one week prior to Season 2 starting so a lot of the problems have gone over my head in this topic. However, I have fought duels during this Hydra season at multiple ranks and against nearly all ranks available.

I believe the biggest problem with the Hydra tournament is that the point differential system is broken. The system favors select quality duels over the majority of duels in a weekly frame. The system works by taking the difference of the final score and adding it to a base value for your total gain of Hydra points.

Here's an example:
Let’s say you win four duels, with the final scores being:

• 5-4
  5-3
  5-2
  5-4

It would take the differences in each (1, 2, 3 and 1, respectively) and would add them to a static base value (5). Those points would then be taken as your earned points for that week; in this example, the player would have earned 27 points.)

Let’s say you think you can do better, so you fight another four duels that went exactly the same way. However, you played an additional two matches that went 5-3 and 5-2, so these matches out-perform your previous 5-4 matches. In other words, your highest point gains would be: 5-2, 5-2, 5-3 and 5-3. So you earned a little bit extra, but at the cost of 50% more dueling. This motivates players to attempt to play as many shutout games as possible in a given week and this is, without a doubt, one of the leading causes of Hydra-burnout.

If a player is attempting to maximize their shutout games, then fighting against lower-ranking duelists would be the best strategic plan for higher-ranking duelists. Due to the Rank disparity on any given night, you may simply not have the option to fight at-rank. There are two options: you fight at-rank of a lower ranked duelist or you don’t. You may not want to take a risk by lowering your rank. The newer player may not fully grasp the whole concept and may just agree to it for a chance at a duel. Although there is no player who is ‘at fault’ in this scenario, it is still a problem.

My Proposal:
What I’m proposing is we remove the differential part entirely and stick to strictly base values dependent on Rank. The idea here is when you win a duel at your rank, you receive the base amount of points. This will greatly reduce the burden on callers during the high-traffic dueling times in Hydra and will make it easier for duelists to keep track of their own points.

I propose that the base wins by rank, if you fight at rank, should be as follows:



**Losses would also yield Points to a certain degree.



So a Glass beating a Glass earns 5 points, an Emerald beating an Emerald earns 7 points, and so on.

Now we’re going to take a look at how this system will handle cross-rank dueling. The Point Differential system is designed where an Emerald has the best opportunity to get points off a shutout victory. This design will benefit you picking easy fights, bottom line. In my proposed system you will receive the most benefit by defeating someone at your current rank, or higher.

When a rank duels their own rank, they get no modifier. When a player duels a rank above their own (but their opponent downranked) and wins, they get a small bonus modifier. When a rank duels a rank below it (having downranked) and wins, they get a small negative modifier, as shown below:



Thus, when regarding the modifiers in the chart above, it is most beneficial for more experienced duelists to duel their own rank. The resulting points from a downranked win is slightly less than winning at your own rank, but still worth the effort if it is the only option at hand. On the other hand, when a low rank player defeats a high rank player, their points will be modified to reflect the difference in ranks.

For example, a Sapphire-ranked player and a Glass-ranked player agree to duel. The Sapphire agrees to downgrade to a Glass rank. If the Sapphire-ranked player wins, he will receive a -1.5 modifier on his final Hydra points. If the Glass-ranked player wins, he will receive a +1.5 modifier on his final Hydra points.

This results in the final Hydra points:



Notice how it becomes very simple: If you beat a Glass, you get 5.0 points. If you beat a Jade, you get 5.5 points. And so on.

The goal of my proposed system is to take what has been considered the core of the Hydra Season 2’s faults and revamp them. You will no longer be scored on how well you perform but instead on who you perform against. You will no longer have to win at least four times a week to hit your point cap; for example, Emeralds can cap in three wins. It gives players the choice on how to cap; you can beat two Emeralds and a Sapphire, or you can beat four Glasses. You could argue that this incentivizes players to play at the Glass level to ‘avoid’ Emerald players, but the impact on Emerald-level games will be negligible, while increasing the number of Glass games and opportunities substantially. The projected values are based on a weekly limit of 20, but can easily be tweaked and remain just as effective. You can argue that the lower ranks will have to duel more than the higher ranks, and that is true, only because they will have an advantage: ranking up will yield a bonus, depending on the determined weekly cap, ranking bonuses will be applied after.

Ideally, with a much more direct scoring for duels, it will be easier to value Challenges and Tournaments alongside them. For example, winning a challenge could secure +15 points to your team’s total at the end of the week. These will be added onto your points, above the cap, just like ranking up. Taking this one step further, if you were to give bonuses for dueling in all three sports, a player can have that bonus added on past their/their team’s cap as well.

I truly believe this will give a better experience to all sides of the Hydra Tournament. Whether you're a returning Emerald, a first time Glass, a Caller or a third-party who wants to help out.

Yours truly,

Queen

Given you used Fists to build your proposal, I take that to be a preferred venue. However with a point cap of 7 meaning done in 3 wins, there is a possibility that Swords and Magic get left in the cold. Why should someone duel in swords or magic, when they can get their points faster in fists?

I’ll touch on other responses later, just wanted to get this one up in the ether.

[Hope]

Given you used Fists to build your proposal, I take that to be a preferred venue. However with a point cap of 7 meaning done in 3 wins, there is a possibility that Swords and Magic get left in the cold. Why should someone duel in swords or magic, when they can get their points faster in fists?

I’ll touch on other responses later, just wanted to get this one up in the ether.

We could just replace all the ranks of fists with the ranks of the other sports in the same tables and receive an even playing field. It would take me 3 seconds to make and I'll post it up later. There's no reason to have it biased, just give all three sports the same point yield. I can just relate easiest to Fists that's why I started there. So as defeating 3 Warlords as a Warlord means you're capped. Defeating 3 Mages as a Mage means you're capped, same as Emerald.

[Kalamere]

I see two problems with a rank based point system, and one minor hitch that I'm not sure what you would want to do with.

One problem is that it assumes a much more even distribution of ranks than what we actually have. I only looked up DoS at this point, but the breakdown of duelists to ranks is something like: 16 Commoners, 1 Swordsman, 2 M@A, 2 GM and 19 Warlords (including the barons and OL). In theory the Commoners and Warlords are ok and can get by just dueling each other. The rest have no choice but to duel outside of rank though. They either fight up and take a risk or fight down and lose points.

Add to that problem number 2 - Warlords are going to avoid fighting anyone but warlords. The reward for a win is lower and the risk of giving up higher points to some other team makes it not worth while. Honestly, this is a bad thing. We've seen it in the past with the old peer win system in DoS (instead of today's SoA system, warlords had to show defeats of 10 or more other warlords in order to challenge). Fighting up might not be the best way to earn yourself and your team points, but at least it's an option for you on low activity nights.

The hitch I see is that it's still not entirely even. Mentorship programs make this a little weird. A squire fights just like a swordsman and a neophyte who has their mentor present looks like an enchanter. DoF is odd out on that with a mentee who has their mentor paying attention is about half a jade. In fairness to the other rank based points, these folks should be treated the same way, but that becomes a bitch to track for the neophytes and mentees since they only get that benefit some of the time.

Anyway .. I personally think rank should stay out of the equation when looking at the duel results. I'd be interested to hear and consider a handicap type equation that started teams off with some value based on their rank composition, but as far as regular duel results it should stay a flat measure. Lower ranks should know the risk they take getting in the ring with a higher rank. From that they can make an educated decision and accept the consequences.

[Andrea Anderson]

I see two problems with a rank based point system, and one minor hitch that I'm not sure what you would want to do with.

One problem is that it assumes a much more even distribution of ranks than what we actually have. I only looked up DoS at this point, but the breakdown of duelists to ranks is something like: 16 Commoners, 1 Swordsman, 2 M@A, 2 GM and 19 Warlords (including the barons and OL). In theory the Commoners and Warlords are ok and can get by just dueling each other. The rest have no choice but to duel outside of rank though. They either fight up and take a risk or fight down and lose points.

Add to that problem number 2 - Warlords are going to avoid fighting anyone but warlords. The reward for a win is lower and the risk of giving up higher points to some other team makes it not worth while. Honestly, this is a bad thing. We've seen it in the past with the old peer win system in DoS (instead of today's SoA system, warlords had to show defeats of 10 or more other warlords in order to challenge). Fighting up might not be the best way to earn yourself and your team points, but at least it's an option for you on low activity nights.

The hitch I see is that it's still not entirely even. Mentorship programs make this a little weird. A squire fights just like a swordsman and a neophyte who has their mentor present looks like an apprentice. DoF is odd out on that with a mentee who has their mentor paying attention is about half a jade. In fairness to the other rank based points, these folks should be treated the same way, but that becomes a bitch to track for the neophytes and mentees since they only get that benefit some of the time.

Anyway .. I personally think rank should stay out of the equation when looking at the duel results. I'd be interested to hear and consider a handicap type equation that started teams off with some value based on their rank composition, but as far as regular duel results it should stay a flat measure. Lower ranks should know the risk they take getting in the ring with a higher rank. From that they can make an educated decision and accept the consequences.

If the player-cap is 20 points, all it takes for a warlord to make cap is to beat 4 commoners for 5 points each. Same with a GM or MAA. They fight 4 commoners, make their cap. Or they fight 3 warlords, make their cap. Or they fight 1 MAA and 2 Warlords, make cap. It's not really going to promote rank dodging from what I've read of it.

Mentors / Nepyh / Squires. They deserve their bonus and it should not effect scoring. If a team dislikes this, the emeralds on it all can take on menors. Warlords can challenge so they can give their lower ranked members a squireship. And mages can make Nepyhs. It'll promote the use of the system that's already underused.

[Hope]

I see two problems with a rank based point system, and one minor hitch that I'm not sure what you would want to do with.

One problem is that it assumes a much more even distribution of ranks than what we actually have.

I primarily looked at the duel of Fist standings when I designed it. From what you've said of the Swords distribution they're both inverted bell-cruves. What you're saying is the players that represent roughly 20% if that of the entire player-base in their respective sports will have to duel outside of rank and they shouldn't be punished for it. Assuming they're NOT warlords, they will only lose .5-1.5 points from a victory. That means to account for an entirely lost duel, they'd have to duel 3.5 duels against the lowest possible duelist (Commoner) by the time you've beaten 3.5 for the difference of an entire duel, guess what? You're already over 3/4ths the way to point cap. It's negligible. It's simply to say your best case scenario is your current rank. I would have suggested a 50% Loss of Points Gained across 3+ ranks if I wanted things to seem impossible. That's simply not the goal. It's to ensure when there is a large amount of duelists present, that they look to who their peers are before straying outside. They have the option to duel lower ranks but at the cost of an extra duel. I think it's incredibly fair and not in the least bit biased to any players. If you hold rank over someone this is the handicap. It shouldn't be naturally appeasing to the highest ranking players and my system reflects this.

Add to that problem number 2 - Warlords are going to avoid fighting anyone but warlords. The reward for a win is lower and the risk of giving up higher points to some other team makes it not worth while.

This again is based on what? I'm willing to bet there are several warlords who would LOVE to fight Commoners 4 times instead of Warlords 3 times. That's the state of the game. You're assuming an awful lot about players and NOT the system in this statement. The reward for a win is objectively lower to keep people fighting at rank when the situation is present. You're not 'giving up' points. The ideal end to every week is that all players hit their respective caps. What will push teams over isn't giving up losses, losses aren't meant to punish anyone and to treat someone as such is just archaic and defeats the point of the game: to have fun. Whether a glass beats an emerald or anyone non-glass all they've done is shaved off 3 points. That doesn't even equal 2 wins. The system is literally in place to make it not as beneficial for the highest tier of players to gun down the lowest. If the given night doesn't offer a fair pool of spread ranks? You can still hit your point cap at the expense of one extra duel.

The hitch I see is that it's still not entirely even. Mentorship programs make this a little weird. A squire fights just like a swordsman and a neophyte who has their mentor present looks like an enchanter. DoF is odd out on that with a mentee who has their mentor paying attention is about half a jade.

This will be the case for a strict minority of players. Having one modifier when an individual is present doesn't change your rank. It makes it trickier for your opponent but having one mod doesn't make you the next rank. Your rank only changes by one thing which is your performance. I don't see a problem telling a Jade with a mentor bonus that he's still yielding the points of a Jade. This isn't a 'hitch' it's a technicality that doesn't effect the way the system will run.

Anyway .. I personally think rank should stay out of the equation when looking at the duel results. Lower ranks should know the risk they take getting in the ring with a higher rank. From that they can make an educated decision and accept the consequences.

This seems a little contradictory to me. If rank stays out of the equation for duel results how can a Commoner know any consequences? If you look at the points gained from a loss chart I created the lower ranks can easily see the consequences, based off of rank. I see a lot of opinions here without a feasible backbone. I'm fine to discuss all aspects of philosophies but not when there are more assumptions on players than the system itself. It's flexible enough to have ideal scenarios while not being harsh when the outlying circumstances occur. Penalties thus far are if you win against the lowest rank as the highest it will take you a total of one more duel to hit your cap, from 3-4. If you lose as the lowest to a highest (vice versa) you will not gain points from the loss. These aren't strict or harsh and they don't remove the possibility of either.

Edit: You cannot blame a tool for the user's operational philosophies. Just because the system runs optimally under the condition that everyone fights at rank doesn't mean they will. Just because the system (point differential) runs optimally with the highest farming the lowest, doesn't mean they will. This is a community driven game and as such the results are purely from the community's decisions as a whole. It's the decision to the individual who they want to duel and why. This proposed system doesn't remove that decision it just gives a (very small) slap on the wrist if you're going to pluck an apple from a lower branch.

[Capt Sneggle]

A four week tournament works fine with or without the extras

I personally did not care that much for the double-points weekends because people end up competing in a venue they may not like simply for the points. But whatever is decided in that regard I will be good with it.

How about at the very end having an all-stars match between ten of the best players scoring record during the Hydra Tournament. It would be entertaining to see it

Other than at the end being burnt out on Swords I had a good time and look forward to next year.

[Rakeesh]

Rings of Honor is a Player Vs Player game and setting. Anything discussed needs to show consideration for those who choose not to compete in Hydra and those who love it. In Hydra Season 1, the point mechanic was 10 points for beating Hydra Competitors, and -10 points for losing to Hydra Competitors. 5 points for beating non-Hydra and -5 for losing to Non-Hydra. As with that system, some duelists dug themselves and their team into a hole. It didn’t work and we saw serious point gains. The 4/2 system presented by Rakeesh, and with Kal’s adjustments is that same system, without the Negative Point values. At least in my mind it looks like the point system from Season 1 with obvious tweaks.

I don't feel like you read the proposal completely, if only because our suggested system's not the same system as what you're talking about from Season 1. The Individual/Team caps effectively change a lot of things. Essentially, this system would (based on projecting this year's team numbers and averages into next year) create a number of teams reaching their maximum potential in regulation points, and having to edge each other out in tournaments, rank gains, challenges, and weekly winning % battles. This means a tighter, more competitive season, with less burn out and reasonable activity demands, split between all three sports.


I'm going to go ahead and repost Kalamere's page 2 suggestion (with some small, suggested modifications from me, in bold). Part of the beauty of this system is just how simple it is, as well. It also covers all of the goals Sylus stated in his original post:


Format
- Teams of 5 players
- No need for Credit System, ditch it.
- Maintain an allowance for adjusting roster. Cap at two times a season.


Regulation Points
- +4 points for a duel win. +1 if the win is against another Hydra competitor.
- +1 point for a duel tie or loss.
- +1 point if you duel in all 3 sports in a given week.
- +1 point if you win a duel in all 3 sports in a given week. (stacked for +2 total).

** Weekly Point Cap of 22 points per duelist (that's 4 wins vs. Participants + 2 for multi-sport bonus)
** Weekly Point Cap of 85 points per team (requiring an average of 3-4 wins per teammate over multiple sports, but possible for four teammates to win 4-5 duels to cover a missing 5th teammate)


Non-Regulatory Scoring (points added post cap)
- Team receives + 5 points for top WoL% in each sport at the end of each week. (min: 10 duels)
- Duelist and Team receive + 2/3/5 points for a gain of rank. (WoL differential, no repeats)
- Duelist and Team receives + 5 points for a challenge win.**
- Duelist and Team receives + 1 additional point for title defense if waiver was required.
- Duelist and Team receive tournament points from two Hydra-specific tournaments: Payout is 20/10/5/5 for 1st/2nd/3rd/4th place.

** Anyone participating in Hydra must agree to not challenge any titles during the tournament with one of their alternate characters. Challenge points are only received by defenders if the defending duelist actually fights in the challenge and wins; successful intercessions are not worth points.

[Goldglo]

Add to that problem number 2 - Warlords are going to avoid fighting anyone but warlords. The reward for a win is lower and the risk of giving up higher points to some other team makes it not worth while.

This again is based on what? I'm willing to bet there are several warlords who would LOVE to fight Commoners 4 times instead of Warlords 3 times. That's the state of the game. You're assuming an awful lot about players and NOT the system in this statement. The reward for a win is objectively lower to keep people fighting at rank when the situation is present. You're not 'giving up' points. The ideal end to every week is that all players hit their respective caps. What will push teams over isn't giving up losses, losses aren't meant to punish anyone and to treat someone as such is just archaic and defeats the point of the game: to have fun. Whether a glass beats an emerald or anyone non-glass all they've done is shaved off 3 points. That doesn't even equal 2 wins. The system is literally in place to make it not as beneficial for the highest tier of players to gun down the lowest. If the given night doesn't offer a fair pool of spread ranks? You can still hit your point cap at the expense of one extra duel.

Not to speak (or write) for Kal here but from a position of historical precedence, he's correct. There are several examples (Peer Wins being one, which I believe was mentioned earlier in this thread) of scenarios where a high rank has a choice between dueling another higher rank or a lower rank and where they get more benefit out of dueling the higher ranked opponent, they will most often choose to duel the higher rank over the lower rank.

That's not to say that history will definitely repeat itself or that this proposed system will yield the same results as the past. It makes sense that a Warlord/Emerald/Mage would prefer to duel the low rank, modbomb, and get what's hopefully an 'easy' win (we all know nothing's guaranteed in that regard), but if it's quicker/faster/easier/more beneficial to duel another Warlord/Emerald/Mage for points, I suspect many folks will trend that way. I could be totally wrong and again, what happened in the past isn't a guarantee for what's to come, but it should at least be taken into consideration.

--Matt

[Hope]

Not to speak (or write) for Kal but from a position of historical precedence, he's correct. There are several examples (Peer Wins being one, which I believe was mentioned earlier in this thread) of scenarios where a high rank has a choice between dueling another higher rank or a lower rank and where they get more benefit out of dueling the higher ranked opponent, they will most often choose to duel the higher rank over the lower rank.

That's not to say that history will definitely repeat itself or that this proposed system will yield the same results as the past. It makes sense that a Warlord/Emerald/Mage would prefer to duel the low rank, modbomb, and get what's hopefully an 'easy' win (we all know nothing's guaranteed in that regard), but if it's quicker/faster/easier/more beneficial to duel another Warlord/Emerald/Mage for points, I suspect many folks will trend that way. I could be totally wrong and again, what happened in the past isn't a guarantee for what's to come, but it should at least be taken into consideration.

--Matt

it is the goal of the system to reward dueling at rank first and foremost. the largest gap in rewards between ranks is one dual extra. I really don't see how this could snowball into an extreme where the highest tier refuses to duel down. I'm not saying the points mentioned don't have merit. it goes without saying that you all have more experience than me in this discussion. there will be nights where there is a plethora of highest rank duels that may choose to only duel each other; why is that an issue? when there people there are duels. i can't see how there could ever be a surplus of duelists and a lack of dueling. there will be ranks dueling regardless of hydra, pointcap or otherwise.

[Andrea Anderson]

Not to speak (or write) for Kal but from a position of historical precedence, he's correct. There are several examples (Peer Wins being one, which I believe was mentioned earlier in this thread) of scenarios where a high rank has a choice between dueling another higher rank or a lower rank and where they get more benefit out of dueling the higher ranked opponent, they will most often choose to duel the higher rank over the lower rank.

That's not to say that history will definitely repeat itself or that this proposed system will yield the same results as the past. It makes sense that a Warlord/Emerald/Mage would prefer to duel the low rank, modbomb, and get what's hopefully an 'easy' win (we all know nothing's guaranteed in that regard), but if it's quicker/faster/easier/more beneficial to duel another Warlord/Emerald/Mage for points, I suspect many folks will trend that way. I could be totally wrong and again, what happened in the past isn't a guarantee for what's to come, but it should at least be taken into consideration.

--Matt

it is the goal of the system to reward dueling at rank first and foremost. the largest gap in rewards between ranks is one dual extra. I really don't see how this could snowball into an extreme where the highest tier refuses to duel down. I'm not saying the points mentioned don't have merit. it goes without saying that you all have more experience than me in this discussion. there will be nights where there is a plethora of highest rank duels that may choose to only duel each other; why is that an issue? when there people there are duels. i can't see how there could ever be a surplus of duelists and a lack of dueling. there will be ranks dueling regardless of hydra, pointcap or otherwise.

Surplus in duelists any given night. Duelists are going to grab who they can. It's also dependent mostly on the player. Do they want to risk fighting at rank for quicker point cap since they don't have time to duel 4 fights? Or, do they go the easy route, mod-bomb low ranks, and have the easier option of gaining their 20 point cap. The thought of losing should be put in mind here too. An Emerald / Warlord / Mage has to think about the fact that they might have a higher loss rate against people their own rank; it's just a playstyle fact. The higher reward would go to them fighting lower ranks, gaining a 5 point win, and only needing to duel 4 times. Or lose to Emeralds 4+ times and only gaining 2.5/2 per win.

It's risk vs reward and mostly on the player to choose what they feel like doing in the end. A system shouldn't be faulted for a persons chosen playstyle. An example should be Sylus' own system for this past Hydra. In all honesty, most mistakes were from player-POV with what could be considered not so good team building. Yes, there were a few hiccups that happened ( the mistake that Kalamere has already apologized for 4+ times, and the bad seeding), but it wasn't *bad*. It's up to the players to choose their route.

From my POV. I'd rather bring a lower rank alt / high rank alt into a tournament style of Queen's on two teams. Use the lower rank to fight higher rank in swords and magic and stay my rank in fists. This is entirely my playstyle. In DoS the fact that commoner vs warlord/baron/overlord isn't exactly that different. The .5 system allows for more balance rank wise. Magic? It's just a .5 boost with Foci. DoF is the only sport where it is an uphill climb for lower ranks ( a fun one to me ). It's my chosen playstyle. Would I risk fighting an Emerald? If I had 3 WoL's under my belt before the Standings update -- yes, I would. Once more, completely on the players side of their choosing.

DoM is notorious for either no dueling on Tuesdays or many high ranks seeking duels and getting no where. They would be most likely forced to fight at-rank with any low-ranking players if asked, and I've seen many do such.

This is all speculation with a few facts, but that seems to be the same for any examples as to why the system shouldn't be used. In all honesty? I'd like to see the system used in something that isn't Hydra as a test.

IMO. Queen, make a tournament that's 3 week long and test it out. Hell, make it DoF only 8D.

[Andrea Anderson]

Players should just follow Uncle Sensei's advice.

[Kalamere]

it is the goal of the system to reward dueling at rank first and foremost. the largest gap in rewards between ranks is one dual extra. I really don't see how this could snowball into an extreme where the highest tier refuses to duel down. I'm not saying the points mentioned don't have merit. it goes without saying that you all have more experience than me in this discussion. there will be nights where there is a plethora of highest rank duels that may choose to only duel each other; why is that an issue? when there people there are duels. i can't see how there could ever be a surplus of duelists and a lack of dueling. there will be ranks dueling regardless of hydra, pointcap or otherwise.

As Matt said and I tried to get across before, we've seen that type of activity in the past. Granted this is a somewhat different animal, but if a Rank 4 duelist (Warlord / Emerald / Mage) can max out for the week in 3 duels rather than 4, I think there is a good chance the same mindset will take over. The average duels per week per Hydra duelist for this past season was 6.37, but the median was only 4. I can very easily see those 4 duels a week people trying to maximize their cap chances by sticking to other rank 4 duelists.

It becomes a problem because instead of complaints of low rank farming (which, btw, I will grant you happened. Despite what I'll continue on to say, Rank 4 duelists this season fought more rank 0 duelists than they did each other) we end up with complaints of people on the lower end unable to find duels. This comes up because the majority of duelists fighting are your rank 4s. 53.52% of all duels involved at least 1 rank 4 duelist. On the other hand, 35.09% involved a rank 0. More interestingly (to me at least) was that Rank 0 duelists took on Rank 4 duelists nearly 3 times as often as they took on each other. (Rank0 v Rank0: 69 times, Rank4 v Rank0, 183 times).

I feel that rank farming complaints are less divisive to the community. It's along the lines of accusing someone of playing dirty. You scored more because you carefully picked your opponents. Rank avoidance on the other hand has proven to take on the appearance of a caste system and more seriously pisses some people off, while installing an 'us' vs 'them' type of mentality.

This will be the case for a strict minority of players. Having one modifier when an individual is present doesn't change your rank. It makes it trickier for your opponent but having one mod doesn't make you the next rank. Your rank only changes by one thing which is your performance. I don't see a problem telling a Jade with a mentor bonus that he's still yielding the points of a Jade. This isn't a 'hitch' it's a technicality that doesn't effect the way the system will run.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that then I guess. The fancy gives you advantage. It's not like we're looking at the player's of the characters. Apple shows up and she's an emerald. The same player brings in Spell instead and she's a glass. Your points differ based on the character rank, but the only game mechanic difference between the two is that one has 4 fancies and the other has none. Apprentices, Mentee and squires get an advantage over their similarly ranked peers, as do the holders of the Talon, Claw and Ring. For that matter, so do all of the titled ranks. I say it's a hitch because I don't think it kills your idea, but I do think that the major difference between ranks is the number of fanices available to them and I find it odd that only the WoL based ones are taken into consideration.

One thing I didn't mention in my last post, but is pretty important from my stand point, is that this would be a bitch to try and track and score. As the guy who wrote the scoring code and did the majority of the data entry for it, keeping everyone's rank updated and having the points calculate based on it, will be no easy task. We have 3 games with different standings systems and update times, none of it is easily parsable. It might be different if only tracking the people on teams, but given all duels count it means listing everyone on the standings into the consolidated doc and then making weekly updates on who moves up (easy since standings keepers note it) and who moves down (much bigger pain).

Overall, I apologize if I come across as saying your idea sucks. It doesn't and that's not what I mean to say. I'm simply saying that for this environment I don't believe it is the way we should go.

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** Note: rank vs. rank duel count number from Hydra 2013 only include duels fought between 2 hydra contestants. It would have taken me way longer to get everyone else's rank.

[Kalamere]

** Weekly Point Cap of 85 points per team (requiring an average of 3-4 wins per teammate over multiple sports, but possible for four teammates to win 4-5 duels to cover a missing 5th teammate)

I'd still prefer to place this at a minumum of 88. I feel that if a team is without someone for the week, then the other members have to meet their personal caps to cap the team. Honestly, I'd like it slightly over (the 90 I originally proposed) so that a team with all 5 duelists getting in the rings on a given week does have the ability to just slightly edge out the competition.

- Duelist and Team receive tournament points from two Hydra-specific tournaments: Payout is 20/10/5/5 for 1st/2nd/3rd/4th place.

What if we met in the middle with something like 10/7/4/2 ?

20 points would be nearly equal to the weekly cap, which I think is maybe a bit too much.

[Hope]

It becomes a problem because instead of complaints of low rank farming (which, btw, I will grant you happened. Despite what I'll continue on to say, Rank 4 duelists this season fought more rank 0 duelists than they did each other) we end up with complaints of people on the lower end unable to find duels. This comes up because the majority of duelists fighting are your rank 4s. 53.52% of all duels involved at least 1 rank 4 duelist. On the other hand, 35.09% involved a rank 0. More interestingly (to me at least) was that Rank 0 duelists took on Rank 4 duelists nearly 3 times as often as they took on each other. (Rank0 v Rank0: 69 times, Rank4 v Rank0, 183 times).

The statistics do speak well for themselves. However that was under a different tool completely. There were some measures in the point differential system that compensated a losing duelist (They scored 4 points and still lost, well that's 4 points). Losing in this system is a lot less forgiving. 2 points at rank. That means if you login as say a Rank4 and you lose 3 straight duels you have netted in < 1 win. It's easy to say that r4 will only duel r4 when looking at the nice side of things but 50% of all duels will have someone getting the shorter end. Keep that in mind. Some players simply will opt to fight the easy r0-2 win instead of spending their time for a 2 point gain.

We'll have to agree to disagree on that then I guess. The fancy gives you advantage. It's not like we're looking at the player's of the characters. Apple shows up and she's an emerald. The same player brings in Spell instead and she's a glass. Your points differ based on the character rank, but the only game mechanic difference between the two is that one has 4 fancies and the other has none.

Grading by rank seemed the most fair for point rewards. If a r4 is playing on a r0 alt, which is a great strategy to cash in on the ranking bonuses, there's no way to penalize them anyway. I don't see why this is worth bringing up. If they're not a r0 they SHOULD get out of that rank within the first week.

One thing I didn't mention in my last post, but is pretty important from my stand point, is that this would be a bitch to try and track and score. As the guy who wrote the scoring code and did the majority of the data entry for it, keeping everyone's rank updated and having the points calculate based on it, will be no easy task. We have 3 games with different standings systems and update times, none of it is easily parsable. It might be different if only tracking the people on teams, but given all duels count it means listing everyone on the standings into the consolidated doc and then making weekly updates on who moves up (easy since standings keepers note it) and who moves down (much bigger pain).

It's really a lot simpler than that. You have every duelist clearly state their current rank at the beginning of a duel. The caller looks at the end who 'won', the look at the last chart in my post and they tag down how many points were won. You see if both players were: at rank, within 1, within 2-3 or over. You determine how many points the loser gets. You have an excel sheet with each duelist's name and you add up the points according to week. If they hit over the point cap, stop counting. Points for a week can easily be decided within 1 night.


EDIT*** : I would even go so far to say if people sent me the logs via email, I would gladly calculate ppw for duelists and teams.

[Hope]

I'd still prefer to place this at a minumum of 88. I feel that if a team is without someone for the week, then the other members have to meet their personal caps to cap the team. Honestly, I'd like it slightly over (the 90 I originally proposed) so that a team with all 5 duelists getting in the rings on a given week does have the ability to just slightly edge out the competition.

Although my thoughts aren't conclusive on the team cap (I feel it restricts more than there should be) I definitely agree with Kalamere. The math projected makes a duelist who is late to the week almost moot for points to the team.

- Duelist and Team receive tournament points from two Hydra-specific tournaments: Payout is 20/10/5/5 for 1st/2nd/3rd/4th place.

What if we met in the middle with something like 10/7/4/2 ?

20 points would be nearly equal to the weekly cap, which I think is maybe a bit too much.

I'd almost argue making it 4+team-player/3+team-player/2+team-player/1+team-p layer. Having too steep of a benefit from a tournament that may only consist of < half the team doesn't seem very fair.