Hydra 2013 Post-Season Discussion OPEN

[Sylus Kurgen]

There were bumps along the way this season, but most of those were miscommunications on my part in checking the clarity of statements made. As with most things, they sounded clear to myself when read aloud, however once posted many asked questions about what this meant or what that meant. My goal is always try to make a rule or statement mean exactly what it says in black and white, nothing between the lines.

Taken from this season I want to work on in order of top priority:
1. Reduce Burnout
2. Increase Rule Clarity
3. Create Invitational Tournament variants.
4. Rank increase points.
5. Preserve Title integrity while encouraging multiple challenges.


Options to fix the above issues:
1a. Lower tournament length to 4 weeks
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.

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

3a. Variant 1. Tag-Team tournament of Captains vs. Captains
3b. Variant 2. Tag-Team tournament of High Seed paired with Low Seed. 1 and 16 vs ???
3c. MegaBrawl inviting the top seeded duelist from each team (use transitional matrix from 2013 season and have multiple callers, like 5.)
3d. Single sport Megabrawl inviting every team to participate. (Obviously at least 5 callers)

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.

5a. No friggin clue because Sylus himself on an IC basis doesn't hold much regard for the titles nor the pomp and circumstance involved with them.

Things I am considering doing away with:
Double Point Weeks in favor of one or two Double Point WeekENDS
Swap Meet.

I'm opening discussion a week early as I'm in the middle of moving and don't think I'll be able to get online and open the thread on the 1st.

[Candy Hart]

I support 1a

1a. Lower tournament length to 4 weeks

In addition to 1a, I think the # of duels used (if keeping the top # format) could be reduced to 3. I think the fewer counting duels, the more likely for all teams to stay close and competitive.


I support 4a

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.

To five, I would save lower challenge points to 5 points or just do away with it. While I like challenges increased, I don't know that I like it to the level that Hydra put it at this season. I prefer people going after titles to do something with it beyond trying to gain points.


I don't support double point weeks or weekends. Unless you want to (a) Make it a double point Friday/Sunday and (b) plan ahead to have callers available/helping on those nights. I think the problem you run into with weekENDS is that Saturday is not a fight night.


I agree with getting rid of the swap meet. I don't think it really fulfills the idea of a "team" when you're an on again off again participating member.


Other notes:

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.

For example, looking only at week one, it looks like TBD and CoM were only .5 points apart from one another, with CoM having a very slight advantage. However, for that week, Lem earned TBD 30 points by winning two challenges. TBD could have dueled more to have more regular points, but with the event points earned, there wasn't really a need. The current set up makes it hard to look back historically and see that.

Another option to have things better represented for looking back, would be to have an actual weekly write-up or post to go over points/accomplishments by all teams and participants.


Building on recognition of accomplishments within the tournament, perhaps there could be small bonuses built in for top performers. 5 points extra to the individual that earned the most DoF, DoM, and DoS points during the week... or the individual that has the best WoL in a sport/overall.


My two cents.

That said, I don't know that I/TBD will participate next time around. Might just do the helping out in the background sort of thing.

[Shadowlord]

Completely in agreement with reducing the number of weeks to 4.

I personally liked the challenge point system, and saw no problems with it, nor did I think the rank increase point system was problematic.

Doing away with the Swap Meet is fine, but I think the point credit system is a similar issue - not all five members of a given team had to duel all of their duels every week; this became strategic, and not a way to handle emergencies.

[G]

No extra points for challenges. Done.

No double point weeks. Or, if you g 4 weeks, ONE week is double point week for ALL SPORTS. (Though I'd be happier with no double point weeks.)

Tournies with two teammates in them, those teammates CANNOT POSSIBLY MEET until the FINAL MATCH.

No targeting or bonus points against the team in the lead: I.E. No Bounty types of points.

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


Genuine acknowledgement when the team that is winning was winning the entire time, and that it was never really as close as the IC announcers claim it was.


If I think of more, I will add.

[Candy Hart]

Completely in agreement with reducing the number of weeks to 4.

I personally liked the challenge point system, and saw no problems with it, nor did I think the rank increase point system was problematic.

Doing away with the Swap Meet is fine, but I think the point credit system is a similar issue - not all five members of a given team had to duel all of their duels every week; this became strategic, and not a way to handle emergencies.

To address this "Strategic vs a way to handle emergencies" because this has been thrown at TBD, I feel. I don't know if Shadow's comment is about TBD, but as it has been directed at us before, I am putting this out here.

1. I see no issue with it being used as part of a strategy so long as the whole team is communicating and happy with the idea. (IE. NOT people telling someone DON'T DUEL. That is NOT okay.) But it is a TEAM sport and if someone wants to sacrifice their personal points for the team's benefit, that's part of the game.

2. Another part of the "strategy" is doing what's in the best interest for the people behind the screens. While there might not have been an issue of an "emergency" there was definitely burnout. Which, from the perspective of a team with many staffers, burnout is a serious issue in and of itself. I would rather willing teammates get extra duels to cover people who are experience this than someone at the end of their rope feel pressured to get the required number of duels in. Or, more so, get that many wins. Because dueling to get four wins is a lot different than dueling to get four duels.

TBD had credits during week four and five. Week four was mostly me and a little bit Mur. I was tired, burned out, and in a bad place. It seemed more detrimental to myself OOC and my team's score to duel. So I didn't push it. Mur was tired and we told him to not worry about it. Week five Mur took the credit because he'd been out of town on business for most of the week, was probably dealing with burned out, and tired. So we told him he didn't need to push himself to try to get four duels and that we would cover it and he could go SLEEP.

[G]

I just think people need to get over other teams for being good. That's the first problem that needs to be fixed.

[Shadowlord]

Completely in agreement with reducing the number of weeks to 4.

I personally liked the challenge point system, and saw no problems with it, nor did I think the rank increase point system was problematic.

Doing away with the Swap Meet is fine, but I think the point credit system is a similar issue - not all five members of a given team had to duel all of their duels every week; this became strategic, and not a way to handle emergencies.

To address this "Strategic vs a way to handle emergencies" because this has been thrown at TBD, I feel. I don't know if Shadow's comment is about TBD, but as it has been directed at us before, I am putting this out here.

1. I see no issue with it being used as part of a strategy so long as the whole team is communicating and happy with the idea. (IE. NOT people telling someone DON'T DUEL. That is NOT okay.) But it is a TEAM sport and if someone wants to sacrifice their personal points for the team's benefit, that's part of the game.

2. Another part of the "strategy" is doing what's in the best interest for the people behind the screens. While there might not have been an issue of an "emergency" there was definitely burnout. Which, from the perspective of a team with many staffers, burnout is a serious issue in and of itself. I would rather willing teammates get extra duels to cover people who are experience this than someone at the end of their rope feel pressured to get the required number of duels in. Or, more so, get that many wins. Because dueling to get four wins is a lot different than dueling to get four duels.

TBD had credits during week four and five. Week four was mostly me and a little bit Mur. I was tired, burned out, and in a bad place. It seemed more detrimental to myself OOC and my team's score to duel. So I didn't push it. Mur was tired and we told him to not worry about it. Week five Mur took the credit because he'd been out of town on business for most of the week, was probably dealing with burned out, and tired. So we told him he didn't need to push himself to try to get four duels and that we would cover it and he could go SLEEP.

The swap meet served a similar purpose in helping players avoid burnout. And in some cases more than five people wished to participate on a team, but less than 10 (the needed number for fielding, say, a second team).

I make the comparison between the swap meet and the credits because it seems as though both were used for other than their intended purposes.

[Rakeesh]

I think that a lot of Sylus' goals posted at the top of this thread are on the right track, as well as most of what other folks have stated so far. Here were the biggest issues for me with Season 2:

- Hydra demanded too much activity to stay competitive each week; you needed four (preferably big) wins for everyone playing. This burned me out, and I know that it's burned a lot of folks out. Beyond that, going through regulation each week made the season feel very much like a second job by the end of it. I already have two jobs and a social life as it is, so I found myself pretty exhausted.

- Challenges lost their value entirely, and became a way for people to just gain extra points. There were no stories surrounding the challenges, and their turnout was terrible because of the pressure put onto regulation. Additionally, their value was way too high compared to a tournament win - or a rank gain.

- Rules were a problem. I don't want to go too far into this; it was by far the most frustrating element of the season for me. Rules were different on the forum and on the website, rules were stated in ways that suggested that they meant the exact opposite of what they actually meant, etc. Rule clarity is a big deal, but beyond that I'd love to see simplified rules. The specifics here don't really matter in hindsight, but they affected all teams at one point or another.

- The 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; in those other venues, Captains set specific matchups against each other at the beginning of the week, and putting your top duelist on a weaker opponent meant that one of your weaker duelists might have to fight the other team's best. There was an equilibrium there, whereas this was simply a free-for-all without any systemized regulation.

------

That said, I crunched the numbers from the season and came up with a system suggestion for next season with Harris, based on the following goals:

- Reduce the required activity to be competitive in regulation by 50%.
- Remove challenges. Increase the number and variety of tournaments.
- Continue to encourage players dueling in new sports to gain rank, but without ultimately penalizing top-ranked players who have no avenues for rank gains.
- Remove tournaments from the existing ROH infrastructure entirely, making Hydra-specific tournaments.
- 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.
- Simplify.

With those goals in mind, and with the averages, means and other various numbers I pulled from Season 2, here's the system that Harris and I collaborated on, in short:

Format - Six Weeks of Regulation, Teams of Five, No Substitution/Credit Systems

Regulation Scoring:
- Each win is worth 4 points against a member of another Hydra team and 2 points against a non-Hydra participant.
- Each loss is worth 1 point.
- Each Rank Gain is worth 5 points (but only the first time that that rank is achieved in the season).
- Each Team can only score up to 60 total regulation points in a given week.
- Each Duelist can only score up to 20 total regulation points in a given week.

Non-Regulation Scoring:
- The Team with the top overall winning % in each sport for a given week gains 2 points.
- Six Hydra-specific tournaments (2 for each sport), with sliding point payout to the top 25% of the participants. Formats could certainly vary here, but should allow Captains to choose specific duelists from their roster that would best fit the demands of that specific tournament. The payouts should range from 2 to 6 points.

Summary: The design of this system would encourage reasonable activity (50% of the average required activity in Season 2) in regulation as a buy-in to be a top level competitive team; the point caps make it possible for a team to still achieve top scores even should 1-2 players be absent for a week (or struggle to do well that week). Then, tournament results and weekly winning percentages would be the means for the top teams to compete in a way that would keep those teams relatively close and competitive, ensuring meaningful activity throughout all six weeks of the season.

----

Granted, none of this is what Sylus suggested above, but as Harris and I spent a good number of hours ironing this idea out at the end of the season - I figured that I'd still put it out there.

[Candy Hart]

Completely in agreement with reducing the number of weeks to 4.

I personally liked the challenge point system, and saw no problems with it, nor did I think the rank increase point system was problematic.

Doing away with the Swap Meet is fine, but I think the point credit system is a similar issue - not all five members of a given team had to duel all of their duels every week; this became strategic, and not a way to handle emergencies.

To address this "Strategic vs a way to handle emergencies" because this has been thrown at TBD, I feel. I don't know if Shadow's comment is about TBD, but as it has been directed at us before, I am putting this out here.

1. I see no issue with it being used as part of a strategy so long as the whole team is communicating and happy with the idea. (IE. NOT people telling someone DON'T DUEL. That is NOT okay.) But it is a TEAM sport and if someone wants to sacrifice their personal points for the team's benefit, that's part of the game.

2. Another part of the "strategy" is doing what's in the best interest for the people behind the screens. While there might not have been an issue of an "emergency" there was definitely burnout. Which, from the perspective of a team with many staffers, burnout is a serious issue in and of itself. I would rather willing teammates get extra duels to cover people who are experience this than someone at the end of their rope feel pressured to get the required number of duels in. Or, more so, get that many wins. Because dueling to get four wins is a lot different than dueling to get four duels.

TBD had credits during week four and five. Week four was mostly me and a little bit Mur. I was tired, burned out, and in a bad place. It seemed more detrimental to myself OOC and my team's score to duel. So I didn't push it. Mur was tired and we told him to not worry about it. Week five Mur took the credit because he'd been out of town on business for most of the week, was probably dealing with burned out, and tired. So we told him he didn't need to push himself to try to get four duels and that we would cover it and he could go SLEEP.

The swap meet served a similar purpose in helping players avoid burnout. And in some cases more than five people wished to participate on a team, but less than 10 (the needed number for fielding, say, a second team).

I make the comparison between the swap meet and the credits because it seems as though both were used for other than their intended purposes.

I saw the swap meet solely as a means to replace players that went MIA or actually had an emergency. Not as a way to deal with burnout. I think team members, outside of the two reasons I just mentioned, should be on a team start to end and not benched.

CoM was only two people short of another five member team. I think it would have been possible to make another, separate from CoM team, but for whatever reason that was not pursued.

ETA: Credits were used for their intended purpose, which was to fill in for duels other team members didn't get.

[Rakeesh]

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.

However, I did ask Sylus about using the swap meet to rotate out some of our players to give everyone a shot, and his response was that that was part of what he had intended it to be.

That's all I'll really say about it. I don't think that the CREDIT system or the SWAP MEET are the best solution, as per my post above.

[Shadowlord]

To address this "Strategic vs a way to handle emergencies" because this has been thrown at TBD, I feel. I don't know if Shadow's comment is about TBD, but as it has been directed at us before, I am putting this out here.

1. I see no issue with it being used as part of a strategy so long as the whole team is communicating and happy with the idea. (IE. NOT people telling someone DON'T DUEL. That is NOT okay.) But it is a TEAM sport and if someone wants to sacrifice their personal points for the team's benefit, that's part of the game.

2. Another part of the "strategy" is doing what's in the best interest for the people behind the screens. While there might not have been an issue of an "emergency" there was definitely burnout. Which, from the perspective of a team with many staffers, burnout is a serious issue in and of itself. I would rather willing teammates get extra duels to cover people who are experience this than someone at the end of their rope feel pressured to get the required number of duels in. Or, more so, get that many wins. Because dueling to get four wins is a lot different than dueling to get four duels.

TBD had credits during week four and five. Week four was mostly me and a little bit Mur. I was tired, burned out, and in a bad place. It seemed more detrimental to myself OOC and my team's score to duel. So I didn't push it. Mur was tired and we told him to not worry about it. Week five Mur took the credit because he'd been out of town on business for most of the week, was probably dealing with burned out, and tired. So we told him he didn't need to push himself to try to get four duels and that we would cover it and he could go SLEEP.

The swap meet served a similar purpose in helping players avoid burnout. And in some cases more than five people wished to participate on a team, but less than 10 (the needed number for fielding, say, a second team).

I make the comparison between the swap meet and the credits because it seems as though both were used for other than their intended purposes.

I saw the swap meet solely as a means to replace players that went MIA or actually had an emergency. Not as a way to deal with burnout. I think team members, outside of the two reasons I just mentioned, should be on a team start to end and not benched.

CoM was only two people short of another five member team. I think it would have been possible to make another, separate from CoM team, but for whatever reason that was not pursued.

ETA: Credits were used for their intended purpose, which was to fill in for duels other team members didn't get.

And, I still think that credit system was flawed, and not in the spirit of all duelers getting all of their required duels in. Just as was the swap meet for the reasons you've outlined (even though that became the effective Free Agent pool). But there were valid reasons for both to be used as they were. And making a cohesive, effective team of 5 out of 3 duelers is far easier said than done.

I honestly think a shorter tournament, as per Sylus' 1a, would eliminate alot of these issues. But some system of Free Agency should remain in place.

[Candy Hart]

Rak: I understand your confusion with the way the Credit system was worded in the rules. The way it read, it looked as though it would take the lowest.

*Weekly points are taken from 4 highest scoring duels of each team member. In the event a competitor does not complete 4 duels, 1 excess duel beyond the initial 4 will be taken from their team mates to fill the difference. The Excess duels will be the lowest scoring matches, up to 1 duel for each member.

However, at some point I saw an example (like the one on the Hydra Dashboard under 'click here for example') that broke it down differently.

When I saw the discrepancy between the wording of the rules and the way the example had been laid out, I asked Sylus for clarification (on June 28th). I suggested editing the wording to "next best," but by that point it was already up.

ETA: Shadow, I guess we will have to disagree. My view of the Credit System is that it was used by the team for team in support of the team and therefore not at all against the spirit of things.

ETA (x2): Last thing I'm adding.. because I forgot. While I stand by getting rid of challenge points... if we DO keep some form of challenge point systems. ONLY PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY FIGHT SHOULD GET POINTS. So if someone steps in they are ACTUALLY stealing points. Or at the very least, a reduction of points earned. Example: Teagan is on a team (or not) and steps in for Kal. Kal either gets no points (and they go to Teagan's team if she's on one) or Kal's points are reduced by X number (that Teagan's team then earns).

[Shadowlord]

Rak: I understand your confusion with the way the Credit system was worded in the rules. The way it read, it looked as though it would take the lowest.

*Weekly points are taken from 4 highest scoring duels of each team member. In the event a competitor does not complete 4 duels, 1 excess duel beyond the initial 4 will be taken from their team mates to fill the difference. The Excess duels will be the lowest scoring matches, up to 1 duel for each member.

However, at some point I saw an example (like the one on the Hydra Dashboard under 'click here for example') that broke it down differently.

When I saw the discrepancy between the wording of the rules and the way the example had been laid out, I asked Sylus for clarification (on June 28th). I suggested editing the wording to "next best," but by that point it was already up.

ETA: Shadow, I guess we will have to disagree. My view of the Credit System is that it was used by the team for team in support of the team and therefore not at all against the spirit of things.

I don't think it will be an issue for next season if some of the other changes are implemented, anyway.

Reducing the number of required fights per week, as per Rakeesh's suggestions, has merit. I'd suggest a 25% reduction though, to 3 duels per week in a 4 week system. It seems like a good balance - honestly I don't know if I can *ever* commit myself to a 6 week long anything, ever again.

[Rakeesh]

I think that the "duels per week" cap is negligible at competitive levels for a couple of reasons. The Hydra Point differential system has problems of its own, as seen in Season 2. It rewards uneven duels and matchups, and requires doing more than getting 3-4 wins per week... it demands getting 3-4 BIG wins per week if you want to really compete at the highest level. Reducing the cap by one doesn't help much in those regards.

That's why I suggested the system above (in my original post) as an alternate method to handling regulation. By capping the amount of points a team can make in a week, and the amount of points duelists can make in a week, you can then have a system that has a built in means to deal with inactivity, and actually have more control over the activity demands of regulation.

For a team of 5 duelists to hit a cap of 60 points a week in my system, they need to be averaging 12 points a duelist. A 3-0 record against Hydra opponents in a week would hit that average goal, but so would 2-4. This way, even struggling duelists an still contribute to a team hitting its weekly regulation points cap. Then, the higher level competition comes down to your six tournaments and weekly winning % bonuses.


In short, I would not do Hydra again if it used a Point Differential System. While rule clarity was my biggest frustration, the design of regulation (even moreso than the broken challenge points) was something that I ended up being strongly against. The dueling cap created the illusion of activity demands being reasonable, but the nature of Point Differential scoring made certain that the exact opposite was true. Reducing the current system's cap from 4 to 3 duels will not have an effective 25% reduction, because you'll still be chasing bigger and better wins.

[Bane]

No extra points for challenges.

For what it's worth (from me), this. Completely and totally, this.