Hydra 2013 Post-Season Discussion OPEN

[Andrea Anderson]

Simple and easy.

1: Do away with swap meet.
2: Make it 4 weeks long.
3: One time only bonus to ranking up. 10 points if anything.
4: Keep challenge points, it is up to the one challenging to choose if they want to do anything spectacular with it or not. People already challenge for less reasons normally and do nothing with their titles.
5: Keep the credit point system. There was no way to abuse it and it was more useful than the swap meet.

I disliked swap meet because, let's say a person joins a team - does terribly that week, then is swapped out. The team still somehow wins and this person gets not only an achievement but a trophy as well. The extra point system got rid of this problem and made teammates have to use strategy and speak with one another to provide points to their team. There was no way this was broken since only 4 duels can be used, once they are used they couldn't be used again. So for TBD; if Mur had not dueled one whole week, along with Candy, only 3 credit duels from Jake, Me, and Lem would be used and everything else would be a point loss. There's no real way to abuse this system.

There's not much else to change, except for what G said. Make sure teams don't meet each other until the finals of a tournament.

Everything else was fine. Sylus, you did a good job.

I'm not going to discuss anything further about Hydra beyond this post.

[G]

I think the easiest rule fix is to just not let Beat Down compete.

[Napoleon Bonarat]

I disliked the high value placed on challenges. It took away from the RP potential for challenging and devalued the titles.

I didn't like the credit system. This could be eliminated by lowering the duels required to 2-3 and shortening the season to four weeks. This also eliminates the need for a swap meet.

I didn't like high levels farming newbs/low ranks to get better differentials. There should be some sort of scale for dueling near your rank and a small bonus for dueling against a Hydra participant. OR implement the "modified Overlord rule" TDL used: you can't use more than two fancies more than your opponent has. (I put it in quotes because I don't think the OL or Barons have their fancies restricted anymore). But still give a small bonus for dueling against Hydra participants (but not such a boost that people refuse to duel non-Hydra). By small I mean like .5 or 1 points. (I edited this because 2 points is too much... but anyway, some sort of algorithm can be set up, whether it is .25, .5, .75, whatever).

Any clarification/change/update/whatever to the rules should have a change log and a notice to check the change log. Nothing is more frustrating than having an understanding of a rule then come to find out it's been changed.

I like the idea of double points. Perhaps though instead of the whole week, just one day. The idea is to get people to try a sport they aren't familiar with, so even a loss can score more than most wins. It'd be easiest to do this on Fight Nights, but still restrict the double points to only one sport per week.

I like points given to rank increases. Two points per increase is a nice. Though no bonus for gaining rank, then losing it, then getting it back again. It's a one time thing: 2 for Jade, 2 for Ruby, 2 for Sapphire, 2 for Emerald.

Xanth needs to be on a team that will duel with him.

I like the idea of 2-3 Hydra-specific tourneys, but I also like some sort of small bonus for winning the ROH-specific tourneys.

Suggest being PROACTIVE instead of REACTIVE to making sure there's enough calling coverage. Set up a spreadsheet and let subs fill in the day(s) they can cover a week or two in advance. Regular callers can still keep their shifts, but they can rest easy knowing there'll be at least one, probably two other callers helping out.

[Andrea Anderson]

I didn't like high levels farming newbs/low ranks to get better differentials. There should be some sort of scale for dueling near your rank and a small bonus for dueling against a Hydra participant. OR implement the "modified Overlord rule" TDL used: you can't use more than two fancies more than your opponent has. (I put it in quotes because I don't think the OL or Barons have their fancies restricted anymore). But still give a small bonus for dueling against Hydra participants (but not such a boost that people refuse to duel non-Hydra). By small I mean like .5 or 1 points. (I edited this because 2 points is too much... but anyway, some sort of algorithm can be set up, whether it is .25, .5, .75, whatever).

Just to reply to this. I recall seeing a lot of higher ranks ( myself included ), fighting lower ranks at matching ranks. It wasn't a forced rule, but many higher ranks saw that the only way to get duels sometimes throughout the week was to swallow their pill and fight at a lower rank. I, myself, during DoF and DoS said multiple times in the chat with Apple that I will fight at my opponents rank. This wasn't really abused, and there wasn't much newbie farming going on. Hydra, as a competition, pulled in a lot of interest from new players who see the rooms huge and full of activity. It's hard to tell who is new / who is not. It's up to the higher ranks *AND* lower ranks to ask if the duel could be more fair and at rank.

I only think a few people got upset with the idea of being asked to fight at rank. But a few bad apples shouldn't spoil the bunch.

There are some lower ranks who don't want to be held back on and see it as an insult. You have go with the flow on these sort of situations and let people play how they see fit.

[Kalamere]

Late to the party, so my comments may be a little bit random, but mostly speaking to the original post from Sylus and the proposal from Rakeesh. Overall, i think the proposal moves in the right direction, but I have some twists i'd propose to it because the numbers don't all work well in my brain. I'll ellaborate when I get there.

Ok: Sylus and Options:

1b. Keep the 6 week format but put breaks at weeks 3 and 6 to host single team event nights such as the Invitational and a Megabrawl. Regular dueling at weeks 3 and 6 would not net any points, just the big event for that particular week. Other variants are Regular points earned in weeks 1, 3, and 5. Special events in weeks 2, 4, and 6.

I like the 6 week timeframe. Putting in two break weeks for tournaments could work, as I also agree there was a lot of burnout towards the end. I think Rakeesh had proposed 6 tournaments and I think that's a bit too much. Also agree with G that for tournaments we should split things into 2 brackets with one member from each team in each bracket so as to avoid putting them against each other until the end.

2a. Increase feedback net so all rules are 100% clear prior to posting
2b. Increase communication among Hydra Administrators and volunteers in general.

Yes, definitely. The rules need to be settled at least two weeks before the tournament begins, IMO, so that we can slice up the wording and answer questions.

4a. Make the Rank increase value equivalent to the WoL needed to attain that rank, but can only earn points for that rank advancement once. Do away with repeats.

Depends on how you mean "WoL needed". I agree with a WoL differential. eg: Earning Emerald would be a 5 WoL differential from Sapphire, but the WoL needed is technically 15. I would like to see the 5 point value awarded.

5. Preserve Title integrity while encouraging multiple challenges.

I think 90% of all challenges hold no story anyway, which the desire for Hydra points and potential team rivalry is actually a step up from. There may be concern that the value is too high (especially as we continue this and re-work other values), but I don't personally have a problem with challenge points.

Re: Doing away with: Double Point Weeks in favor of one or two Double Point WeekENDS
Nap (I think?) made a good point that Sat. is DoS only, so a "weekend" should probably just be the fight nights. I know double points weeks caused folks a lot of stress and did make scoring wonky. It might be best to ditch them and insert a different incentive to duel in all 3 sports (see later on in new proposal).

Re: Doing away with the SwapMeet.
I really don't see any harm in having the Swap Meet. Some folks might have been annoyed with CoM's use, but it was within the expectations due to Rakeesh and Sylus pre-season conversation. Also though, other teams made use of it. I see no harm in allowing teams to add/remove a couple players during the season when (a) they have someone who finds they don't have time or interest and (b) there is someone else who is wanting to join. EG: Cory on SNL is a complete no show and they picked up Jin to replace him. That's a GOOD thing to be able to do. The same with FON swapping out Jedi for Queen.

Looking at Kal's Hydra Dashboard, if the point system is kept the same or very similar, I think the event points should be displayed within the week it was earned and not in its own separate place. I think that by having it not broken down by week it gives an less than full view of how the points looked week by week.

Lets save display of scores until we figure out what the scoring is. It has no actual relevance to the game outcome. We'll take time later to re-work a dashboard for a new system and do a better job of making sure TBD gets all their credit.

5 extra points for every caller on a team that calls more than 8 duels on one shift.

I can't get behind this. Your heart's in the right place and I agree the caller's are massively important to the success of any dueling endeavour, but I don't think it's a good game mechanic.

he point differential system encouraged players to take on easier opponents by rewarding their big wins with significantly more points. While I loved the point differential system in TDL and IFL, I saw it as a pretty big failure in Hydra

I agree. I like that big wins are worth more than closer wins, but in a system that allows you do duel as many times as you can find a caller and an opponent, it just didn't work well.

Remove the point differential scoring system and implement a system that encourages teams to actually fight against each other, but still give reasonable value to dueling non-Hydra players.

- and -

Each win is worth 4 points against a member of another Hydra team and 2 points against a non-Hydra participant.

That is a 100% point increase between dueling a nonparticipant to dueling a participant. To achieve your individual point cap of 20 it would take 5 wins vs. Hydra participants and 10 against non. I think that's too big a difference and a good incentive for people to avoid duels with folks not in the game.

Each Rank Gain is worth 5 points (but only the first time that that rank is achieved in the season).

I agree with the "only the first time" clause.

The Team with the top overall winning % in each sport for a given week gains 2 points.

I like this too. I'd increase the value a little (see later post), but it's a good thing to have in I think as a counter to mass dueling. I also like that it is applied after the weekly regulation cap. NOTE however that we would need to decide on the minimum number of duels required in a sport to qualify. A whole team going 1-0 in DoM should not get these points.

RE: Credit System. If using a point cap system such as Rakeesh proposed it probably wouldn't be necessary. That said, I had no issue with the way it was used this year and actually rather liked it.

Just to reply to this. I recall seeing a lot of higher ranks ( myself included ), fighting lower ranks at matching ranks.

I actually agree with both Apple and Nap here. There was a lot of both going on. I'm not sure there's a way to fix the farming without putting in some kind of rank based points, but then you risk the opposite issue of low ranks not being able to get duels. I guess we could discuss a rank based handycap system and start teams with a lot of low ranked duelists with some number of points each week, but that gets messy too.

More later ...

[Kalamere]

I like the basic idea of what Rakeesh tossed up, but not all the values. eg: the 2 point vs. 4 point win values. There are also one or two things I'd add to incentivize participation in all 3 sports, since we're talking about ditching the double point weeks. This is just building on what he wrote with expectations that others will build on it.

Format:

• Teams of 5 players
• No need for Credit System, ditch it.
• Maintain an allowance for adjusting roster. Cap at 1 or 2 times a season.

Regulation Points:

• 4 points for a duel win. +1 if the win is against another Hydra competitor. (+25% seems reasonable)
• 1 point for a duel tie or loss against non-participant.
• 0 points for a loss against another Hydra participant. (risk is a good thing.. was tempted to say 0/-1 for these two)
• +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).

** Point Cap of 22 points per duelist (that's 4 wins vs. Participants + 2 for multi-sport bonus)
** Point Cap of 90 points per team (4 duellists max + at least *something* from the 5th and, if not, it's only 2 points)

Non-Regulatory Scoring (points added post cap):

• Team receives + 5 points (the value of 1 duel win) for top WoL% in each sport. (min: 8 duels in sport? 10?)
• Duelist and Team receive + 2/3/5 points for a gain of rank. (WoL differential, no repeats) [post Cap to counter challenge points]
• Duelist and Team receives + 5 points for a challenge win.**
• Duelist and Team receives + 1 point for title defense if waiver was required.
• Duelist and Team receive tournament points from 2 tourneys: (actual values to be determined later. maybe 5/3/2 for 1st - 3rd place).

** I know challenges are debatable, but I actually liked the challenge activity. The lower point value might help some. That said, the thing I didn't like in re: challenges was people using alt, non-participating, characters to tie them up. No offense to anyone who did it, it was within the rules and good strategy, but I'd like to see it eliminated. I think that if we DO keep challenges in the game, then anyone joining the game agrees not to challenge with their alts for the duration. Also, to get the points the duelist must actually fight in the duel. It felt shady taking those points when Ellisa stepped in and I just didn't care for it. Oh, and also, we really need to figure out the standings keeper advantage problem.

[G]

To the credit system.. It's not really a bad system at all. It worked on several planes.

In a nutshell, it's not the systems fault if you have a duelist who sucks horribly outscored by a credit system. Case in point, I went 1-5 for DoS double point week. If I got outscored by the Credit System because people were away or unavailable that same time, how is that the system's fault and not mine for sucking so horribly?

Want to win, don't suck or have sucking duelists on the team.

[Andrea Anderson]

To the credit system.. It's not really a bad system at all. It worked on several planes.

In a nutshell, it's not the systems fault if you have a duelist who sucks horribly outscored by a credit system. Case in point, I went 1-5 for DoS double point week. If I got outscored by the Credit System because people were away or unavailable that same time, how is that the system's fault and not mine for sucking so horribly?

Want to win, don't suck or have sucking duelists on the team.

I don't listen to my own advice. Here is, what I believe, the right numbers. I might be off a little.

All together Credit system points used
Forces of Nature: 48
Sunday Night Leftovers: 48
Great of Strength: 43
Dirty: 4
Company of the Dragon: 50
Team Beat Down: 53
Hydra: 27.5

Compared to Swapmeet, I'll use CoM as an example since they had a swap almost every week.
Week 2: 58 ( Nappy -> Shadow ), 50 ( Rand -> Tallstaugh ) ( DOS Double Week )
Week 3: 27 ( Tallstaugh -> Nappy )
Week 4: 30 ( Nappy -> Elaine ) ( DOM Double Week )
Week 5: 24 ( Elaine -> Nappy )
Week 6: No switches
All together: 189

The gain from Sweapmeet outdid the gain from the Credit System by far. It allowed the possibility of a better point gain per week compared to the credit system, since the credit system only covers four duels -- and that's if they were all in the sport of the favored week. Beat Down for an example, only used credits for 2 weeks. One of them being the DoM double points week.

Week 4 for Team Beat Down is
Credit: 33
Apple: 62 ( 4 DoM wins )
Candy: 18 ( one DoM win, one loss )
Jake: 39 ( One DoM win, one DoM loss, 2 DoF wins )
Mur: 19 ( 2 DoM wins, 1 DoM loss )
Lem: 68 ( 4 DoS wins )

The credits were: 2 DoM wins. 1 DoF win, which equaled into 33 points.

All together the team gained 259 points that week. Far below the possibility of other teams could have gained if they had gotten at least 4 5-4 wins on each teammate in magic if the effort was put in.

The credit system wasn't flawed. Compared to the possible point gains the swap system had, it could be considered harder used than the swap-meet and applied more pressure to a team using it, while the swap-meet was an easy fix for more casual players.

I for one would like to see a good example of how the credit system was wrong or broken. Simply because the credit of one week outweighed a players points should not be used as an excuse. It is not the credit systems fault if a player is unable to achieve the wins they need in a given week, as G pointed out with his own scores; the 1-5 being from the DoS double week. It was a string of badluck on his part and not the fault on the system. This string could have happened to anyone using the credit system, resulting in lower scores. Swapmeet and the Credit System both did exactly as intended, and both had the same outcome. In all honesty the Credit System allowed for teams to not stockpile benched members. The RoH community is a small one. We can't expect there to be enough people to swap into each week when most members are either alts or have alts on other teams. The credit system was a nice way to not have to worry and scramble for a new team member.

[Napoleon Bonarat]

I'll have to back out of the discussion now. I guess I'm still too mad about things that happened during Hydra.

TBD won all the things. That's all that matters.

[Shadowlord]

As I've mentioned before, the swap meet became the Free agent pool, in effect. It also required the changes for that week to be determined well in advance, which actually did remove a great deal of its flexibility. That was a huge limiting factor.

As for this being a small community, that's exactly the argument for having a swap meet. There just aren't enough to create extra teams at will, and three extra players is a world away from five.

I'm not going to address the credit system any more than I already have. But I do like both Kal and Rakeesh's ideas, in no small part because they reduce or eliminate the need for one.

I'd also like to add my two cents to something Apple said earlier: you've done a great job on the Hydra tournaments, Sylus, and I'm highly grateful for your work.

[Rakeesh]

I like the basic idea of what Rakeesh tossed up, but not all the values. eg: the 2 point vs. 4 point win values. There are also one or two things I'd add to incentivize participation in all 3 sports, since we're talking about ditching the double point weeks. This is just building on what he wrote with expectations that others will build on it.

Format:

• Teams of 5 players
• No need for Credit System, ditch it.
• Maintain an allowance for adjusting roster. Cap at 1 or 2 times a season.

Regulation Points:

• 4 points for a duel win. +1 if the win is against another Hydra competitor. (+25% seems reasonable)
• 1 point for a duel tie or loss against non-participant.
• 0 points for a loss against another Hydra participant. (risk is a good thing.. was tempted to say 0/-1 for these two)
• +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).

** Point Cap of 22 points per duelist (that's 4 wins vs. Participants + 2 for multi-sport bonus)
** Point Cap of 90 points per team (4 duellists max + at least *something* from the 5th and, if not, it's only 2 points)

Non-Regulatory Scoring (points added post cap):

• Team receives + 5 points (the value of 1 duel win) for top WoL% in each sport. (min: 8 duels in sport? 10?)
• Duelist and Team receive + 2/3/5 points for a gain of rank. (WoL differential, no repeats) [post Cap to counter challenge points]
• Duelist and Team receives + 5 points for a challenge win.**
• Duelist and Team receives + 1 point for title defense if waiver was required.
• Duelist and Team receive tournament points from 2 tourneys: (actual values to be determined later. maybe 5/3/2 for 1st - 3rd place).

** I know challenges are debatable, but I actually liked the challenge activity. The lower point value might help some. That said, the thing I didn't like in re: challenges was people using alt, non-participating, characters to tie them up. No offense to anyone who did it, it was within the rules and good strategy, but I'd like to see it eliminated. I think that if we DO keep challenges in the game, then anyone joining the game agrees not to challenge with their alts for the duration. Also, to get the points the duelist must actually fight in the duel. It felt shady taking those points when Ellisa stepped in and I just didn't care for it. Oh, and also, we really need to figure out the standings keeper advantage problem.

I rather like the changes and adjustments to my system proposed above, with a few exceptions.

Challenges: I'm still not in support of the challenge system, overall. While Kalamere's proposal addresses the balance concerns with scoring and utilization of alts to lock up opportunities (of which I certainly didn't enjoy), I suppose that the remaining sticking point for me is the history and value of titles; when the value of titles is equal only to the points they give you for something joyriding on the ROH system, you don't get the same turnout and excitement inherent in challenge matches. I had multiple challenge matches earlier this year with 30-50 spectators; I barely saw any spectators outside of a couple of the duelists own team members for any of the challenge matches during this season of Hydra.

Secondarily, the demands for Hydra points forced people to challenge in places where it goes against what their character would normally do, or suffer bad matchups. I just didn't like it, but I won't harp on it further, as Kalamere has put forth a balanced design proposal for it.

Tournament Points: I think that tournaments need to have an inherently higher value in points than challenges/rank gains. Winning a tournament is just significantly more difficult. To determine what that point value is, you have to consider its effective and desired worth compared to other means of scoring bonus points (rank gains, challenges, what have you). If we're only holding two tournaments (which I admit, is more reasonable-sounding than my proposal of six), then the value of those tournaments is miniscule when compared to the value of weekly winning %, rank gains, challenges, and pretty much everything else in Kalamere's adjusted proposal.

If these tournaments are to be a competitive highlight of the season, which I believe they should be, I think that they should hold significantly more weight than 5/3/2. If we're going with only two tournaments, I would suggest a payout 20/10/5/5 (1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th). That puts those two tournaments on competitive par with four rank gains, or four challenges, a piece. With only two tournaments (as opposed to the theoretical four that we had this season), that seems about right to me.

Zero/Negative Regulation Duel Points: I do think that these values shouldn't drop below 1 point. Morale is key to maintaining a healthy competition throughout, and rewarding struggling duelists for still being active is important. This season, a loss was basically a black mark on your team. G'nort mentioned going 1-5 one week, and that's a good example. The difference between scoring 5 points for your team, and 10 points for your team with a cap system like this means that if you go 1-5, those your losses do not hold an absolute value of zero points for all of your effort and activity.

Standings: If there is a challenge system of some sort, I do agree that having a completely standardized system here is paramount. It's probably a good idea either way.

[Candy Hart]

As for this being a small community, that's exactly the argument for having a swap meet. There just aren't enough to create extra teams at will, and three extra players is a world away from five.

If it hadn't already been stated otherwise by Rak, I might agree with you.

The fact that CoM had benched members had nothing to do with the fact that another team COULD NOT be formed.

I didn't pursue a second team after considering it for a couple of weeks for two reasons:

- Sylus discouraged it when I spoke with him.
- Some of our players were already on other teams and had vacations that would take them out for a full week at a time, and I decided that the swap meet would be the best means to help reduce folks' burnout. When I made that decision, the CREDIT rules read to me that they would be taking the worst duels and not the best duels (as ended up being the case), so I did not consider that to be a viable strategy. Once I learned that it was a very viable strategy, the season had already begun.

Bolded is mine.

Given that a player could have two characters (on different teams) it is entirely possible for the three CoM extras (that were used) to go into another team with two alts that were not already on a team (like E?). I assume Rak was discouraged by Sylus from using a second team because of how it might appear to have a CoM Team 1 & CoM Team 2. That doesn't mean there couldn't have been a team that wasn't associated with CoM. Instead, extra people were bench members and used to be traded out during the weeks that people might not have been around/available rather than using the credit system (due to a misunderstanding of how that worked).

[Rakeesh]

re: Credits

That's accurate, Candy. The Swap Meet system, based on my understanding of the rules and conversations with Sylus, was what we were encouraged to use - and it made the most sense to me. My overall issue with the Credit System wasn't necessarily the system itself:

It was simply the extreme lack of clarity and inconsistency in the rules and my private conversations about the rules.

Beyond that, I don't really like how the Credit System is designed, in part because I really don't like how Point Differential scoring played out. The system that Kalamere and I are talking about above, I think, is a lot better.

re: Swap Meet
That said, also Shadow's right. In hindsight, there is no way that the "other half" of COM would have been able to produce an active team by themselves. Several members had alts on other teams, others had long spurts of inactivity; my guess is that they would have beat GOS and no other teams.

I'm not proposing that we need a Swap Meet next season if we go with a system like the one we're talking over above, but if we did, I would suggest capping the number of times a team can substitute a duelist for a week in a given season (perhaps at 2). In that case, I would call it a Temporary Substitution, and not a Roster Swap.

Basically, I'm suggesting that what we're proposing is a better solution than either system from Season 2, as well as improving the other bumps in the Season 2 system.

I enjoyed Hydra, because I got to play alongside a lot of my favorite people, but there were a lot of things about it that were incredibly frustrating - the chief of which were the activity demands to remain competitive.

[Aenlyn Hollow]

Here are my thoughts on the main topics.

Credit System
I really didn't have any issue with the system, or how it was used, beyond the fact that the rules about how it worked seemed to change. I do agree that the rule changes Rakeesh/Kalamere suggest would make it moot anyway, which is a good way to solve the division over it.

Rule Changes in General
In addition to the change in the credit system, there was also a change in the rules regarding intercession. The original rules stated clearly that duelists would not get points for defending a title via intercession, and these were silently changed after the start. If anything is going to change after the start, some sort of notification should be necessary.

Player Swapping
I don't feel how CoM used subbing players was underhanded, especially since it was the route recommended to us and were were just trying to give everybody on our team that wanted a chance to contribute, but I can see why some people might have been bothered by it, and I can see that as the rule stands it could be abused a lot more if people wanted to. Maybe allow for 1 or 2 alternates, which need not be selected at the start of the tournament. This way you still allow for inactive members to be replaced or people unavailable for a week to be subbed out, without allowing the freedom of unlimited swaps.

Challenges
I was unable to participate in the challenge system, since I came into the tournament with no real rank and despite my best efforts never managed to get high enough and put together the SoA during Hydra. The balance to that (although a rather weak one) was the points for rank increases. If you're going to give points for rank increases on a tournament WoL basis, that's basically removing the one way for non-top ranked duelists to gain some ground. I realize that people who have earned top ranks deserve rewards for that, but they already have fancies, and I really feel tournaments should be more about performance during that tournament, not how much you've dueled prior to it.

Point Differential / Farming
I agree with the others that dislike the Point Differential scoring, for two reasons. It contributed greatly to the grind, as there was a pressure to keep dueling to improve scores, and it raises the temptation for underhanded play. The newly proposed systems deal with this, and if such a system is tried I think a discussion on how to reward dueling against higher ranks or hydra opponents could probably come up with something pretty fair.

Towards the end of the tournament especially, it became hard for a few people on my team to find duels. Obviously it's up to each individual who they duel, but we had some instances of people actively telling others to refuse to duel people on our team. Some mechanism to encourage a wide variety of opponents or guarantee matches would also be nice, but I'm not sure how.

New Suggestions
In place of challenges, maybe some alternative could be worked out that's central to just Hydra? Maybe give the duelist with the best % in each sport for the week a title, and then give a +1 to the winner of each duel the champion is involved in for their sport.


In Parting
For all the problems people faced, I thought the tournament went pretty well and I was happy to participate. I haven't really dueled since the team leagues, because I've just always found team events more fun than anything I do on my own.

I do think that things got a bit too personal and political at points, and that was the most unfortunate part about it all for me. Hopefully an adjusted format and some better communication will cut down on that if it's run again.

[Andrea Anderson]

Towards the end of the tournament especially, it became hard for a few people on my team to find duels. Obviously it's up to each individual who they duel, but we had some instances of people actively telling others to refuse to duel people on our team. Some mechanism to encourage a wide variety of opponents or guarantee matches would also be nice, but I'm not sure how.

Sad, and true. This is going to happen even more if extra points per Hydra Team vs Hydra Team happens. It happened in Season 1 where people outright refused to fight Team Beat Down members. It even happened in Season 2, which seemed to happen to you as well, where players would outright tell others IC of all places, not to fight Team Beat Down.

It's easy to blacklist a team ( even if it might be considered not in the spirit of the competition ) when it comes to Team vs Team extra points. That's my reason for disliking the idea of an added boost if it's a Team vs Team match, since it will promote more strategy and team dodging, which already happens anyway -- but might be worse than this season.

TBD won all the things. That's all that matters.

The only way TBD would have lost is if the credit system had been axed, along with Event Points being scrapped; which meant no challenges, no tournaments, no rank boosts, etc.