Season 3, Post-Discussion.

[Sylus Kurgen]

Well gang, from my perspective...this was the best season yet. Very few issues and things were pretty smooth.

But we live on feedback. Where do the rest of you stand?

[Lilith Anderson]

Like: Most of the invitational tournament
Dislike: The wild card's impact on everything

[Andrea Anderson]

Like: Most of the invitational tournament
Dislike: The wild card's impact on everything

Pretty much this. Disliked the focus on Wild Card. Instead of points for and points against being the reason a team was on top, it was Wild Card points. At a time Chemical Burn held the best PDPA in a bracket and was still considered second place simply because they got gimped a week in WC points. It also made other matches of the week for a team almost pointless when there was a double wild card.

Everything else was fine by me except for the focus on WC.

[Spider]

Like: Most of the invitational tournament
Dislike: The wild card's impact on everything

Pretty much this. Disliked the focus on Wild Card. Instead of points for and points against being the reason a team was on top, it was Wild Card points. At a time Chemical Burn held the best PDPA in a bracket and was still considered second place simply because they got gimped a week in WC points. It also made other matches of the week for a team almost pointless when there was a double wild card.

Everything else was fine by me except for the focus on WC.

The double WC did carry too much weight, in my opinion, as did the WC in general. Having said that, I think the season was well-run and very enjoyable.

[Bile]

As a player I enjoyed this season of Hydra a lot. It was a lot of fun to duel with the WC bonuses, you felt that added pressure to your duels knowing the week lived or died with your performance(which was often, if not always the case with the WC bouts as was previously mentioned). I really enjoyed that this season catered to what the community needed instead of simply carbon copying previous seasons. There have been new events introduced this year which I think may give reason for people to want to relax from regulation dueling since we saw Madness then Ragnarok then Hydra and shortly we'll have IFL. It's been an exciting, but taxing year on duelists. I liked that Hydra cut back on that tax on its participants and gave it a less is more approach. Good work by Sylus and those who helped him behind the scenes.

As a coach in this previous year my largest concerns were in line with the previous posts which were the Wild Card system. It was a new and creative element that helped week to week be less "solved" as far as the game aspect went. You simply couldn't predict which team was going to win based on paper, which is good in any game to keep it exciting; but the issues I have with it are that it was very binary in design and was held over individuals performances.

• When I say it was binary I think that from my perspective looking back, I was one of very few coaches who experimented with values to punish the other team instead of simply doing a +3 and I have to say I regret not going with the +3 every time. You either did +3 or your choice had little to no impact at all. You could expect everyone to do +3 and occasionally had the monster matches which completely dictated who won, or you had offsetting +3 matches.

• When I say the WC was held over individuals performances I'm referring to the guide below the standings. "Ranking Order is: (1) Record, (2) WC (3) PDPD." The main criteria to determine your team's overall ranking went Record, which is a good macro measurement of your team's success. WildCard, which I just went over; and then PDPB which is the micro level of measurement on your team's performance. Personally I think it would have been a better fit to weigh it Record, PDPB then WC for tie-breakers.

Overall I'd say the event ran well and was fun to take part in on both sides of the coin.

[Kalamere]

I was a fan of the WC system in general. I liked that it gives the captains a bit of strategy to work with and weigh their odds based on their assumptions of how good their DoF fighter is, or how week the other team might be in magic. It takes the IFL bout point system basically and makes it a little more dynamic to meet the tri-sport aspect of the game.

I also believe, that for the next run, you could enhance that some more by making the allotment higher and having it spread out over multiple fights. Having a WC point or three bet on your duel makes it mean just a little bit more I think, and it could be cool to spread out the love some.

What I'd propose is to increase the WC allotment per match to 6 points, but change it some so that (a) all 6 points have to be used, (b) a minimum of 1 point has to be applied to each fight and (c) the winning team only gets 50% of the losers WC value. That leaves the max WC gain from a single fight at 6 points, while also putting more out there in the wild to be picked up in the remaining duels.

[Bailey Raptis]

my TL;DR two cents on the Wild Card system: I liked the idea of weighting fights, but I can see why it could be annoying when double wild-card fights basically seemed to invalidate the rest of the week's slate of matches. I don't have ideas for tweaks, but I'm sure the community can think of something (and Kalamere-mun already has!)

[JewellRavenlock]

What I'd propose is to increase the WC allotment per match to 6 points, but change it some so that (a) all 6 points have to be used, (b) a minimum of 1 point has to be applied to each fight and (c) the winning team only gets 50% of the losers WC value. That leaves the max WC gain from a single fight at 6 points, while also putting more out there in the wild to be picked up in the remaining duels.

I like this adjustment!

I feel like it retains the WC system (which is fun), removes some of the kinks from the system, while actually adding even more strategy to it.

[Eden Parker]

Just wanted to add in my own brief defense of the WC system.

Certainly, my team benefited from the double WC matches and using the WC as the second determiner of ranking. It gave us a much-needed boost. And because of that, over the course of the season, I began to see the WC as something of a field-leveler.

My team was pretty heavily outmanned, both in experience but more importantly in rank. My fighters were always going to be fighting uphill battles, not just to win duels, but to even put up a decent amount of points because without mod advantages, putting together points is slower in every sport. (Of course you don't need mods to win or to score highly, but the advantages really do help). So our PDPB was probably always going to be rough.

But the WC system meant that we could make a big gamble on a double WC match (assuming our strategy was correct) and maybe pull off one big win against a team that we otherwise wouldn't have a shot at. Those double WC wins kept us in the mix in a way we wouldn't have been able to if the system had been set up differently.

I also understand that maybe there's a sense of unfairness about that. I can't remember exactly how the numbers worked now, but it probably wasn't such a good idea if the only way you could overcome a double WC loss was if you won both other fights and one of them was a shutout. I don't think anyone should be in a position where they feel like their duel doesn't matter.

And even though I liked the WC system, there were some things about it that didn't make sense to me. I think Bile's analysis of why you have to use the max +3 points is correct. So the lower point options are sort of obsolete. And just to repeat myself a little, as much as I liked the boost that the double WC gave my team, a double WC should not make the other two duels irrelevant in terms of points.

I'm not much of a game designer, but it seems like Kalamere has a good suggestion there to address these issues while not losing the WC system.

Overall, I thought the season was fun and ran well.

I enjoyed the invitational, especially the dueling format which was unusual and fun. I hope next year the hiccups at the start of the tournament will be smoothed out, since it seemed like only Lilith ended up having to fight a test match.

Thank you for your hard work on the season!