Tournament Finals Structure Promotes Stalling

Premise: "The current tournament finals structure fails to offer meaningful strategy and rewards people for stalling/time outs." I will make this very brief, since this is just an idea, a premise, a thing I have discussed only by pints, but with many people over a couple of years. The best way of getting a win in finals at the moment is stalling for the last 20 minutes, grinding slightly to get to lunge range, go for an oust and trust the table to time out before others have time to react. The game experience is dull, does not resemble the flow of a generic VtES game, and promotes stalling. We have seen the last EC, and both Ropecons 2017 and 2018 time out at the finals. A fix? Hard to say. I was thinking of possibly having 2h time, and giving +10minutes per a player ousted to give some room for counter plays, but have not put it to practice. It is just an idea. How do you guys feel about the finals structure? Not the tournament, but the finals in a vacuum. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

In my experience, timeouts in finals usually happen because finalists tend to be more conservative than usual, and therefore neither do they want to be ousted (the understandable "primum vivere") nor are they willing to let another Methuselah oust their prey. Hence, they spend a considerable amount of time on tough negotiations in the hope of dealing a final blow in the last minutes (for those who are not the top seed) or to stay alive for as long as possible (for the top seed). What in my opinion many players do not realise is that overall they should not prevent the oust of the first Methuselah (in fact, they should make that happen as soon as possible), because that would grant the remaining players more time, and would change the game dynamics and break the more-often-than-not overrated "game balance". Note that if a final has a 2 hour time limit, each player has only 24 minutes available to win the game if the other four Methuselahs are still alive. And if we bear in mind that a VTES game lasts for 10 to 12 turns, that means that each player will have 2 minutes and 24 seconds to spend on their turns in the best case scenario. However, what I witness quite often is finalists not being aware of the time factor. They play their turns as if the final were never going to end. They sometimes get into meaningless negotiations, or useless actions that are not in their best interest, thus wasting their precious time and that of others. Do not take me wrong though. The top seed can obviously aim for the time out and not be necessarily stalling. That's a perfectly legitimate way of winning a tournament. But the other four finalists should know better and break the game as soon as possible. Time is running... V:EKN Website Coordinator

> What in my opinion many players do not realise is that overall they should not prevent the oust of the first Methuselah (in fact, they should make that happen as soon as possible), because that would grant the remaining players more time, and would change the game dynamics and break the more-often-than-not overrated "game balance". > I 100% agree with this statement. I tried to write a follow up to this, but can't really find the words. I think players are playing for the top seed if they take any more time than absolute minimum for their initial turns. Not themselves. Still, the culture very much applies a stalling style of play. Some fault of that is in that the structure rewards those plays more often than not. Some fault is in the culture itself, which is of course player-made. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

I agree that not wanting some random Methuselah to die at the table leads to timeouts. While not as big of a factor as the above, Heart of Nizchtus, Ashur Tablets, and other effects that result in choosing and shuffling cards take time from other players. Couple that with the conservative finals play style that was mentioned and 2 hours is usually enough for a timeout in my area. I would be curious to know how many Berkeley/San Jose finals end in ousts vs timeouts; I think much less than 50%. Be careful when you fight the monsters, lest you become one. -Friedrich Nietzsche brandonsantacruz.blogspot.com/

> Kraus wrote: > I think players are playing for the top seed if they take any more time than absolute minimum for their initial turns. Not themselves. > I'll boil it down for you: playing slowly is playing to lose.

> kschaefer wrote: > > > Kraus wrote: > > I think players are playing for the top seed if they take any more time than absolute minimum for their initial turns. Not themselves. > > > I'll boil it down for you: playing slowly is playing to lose. > this is one of the things that I learnt from 20 years of Magic The Gathering. To get a chance on winning you have to use your deck to maximum potential and one of the parts of this is to play as much turns as possible. Prince of Magdeburg VEKN-ID: 5850005 Prince-ID: 615

Why not having a mix between timelimit and number of turns limit? A final have to last at least 2h and a minimum of 50 turns for example If at the end of 2 hours , there weren’t 50 turns played, the game last until they are reached. If they are, this is time limit.

Have higher seed only affect seating. Have ties determine the winner randomly from among the tied players. There is no longer an incentive for anyone to not gain VPs in that scenario. If the table times out completely, with .5 VPs, then you have a 20% chance of winning via die roll.

I think I suggested a while back that holding on to the Edge for a full round grants you 1 VP (in addition to the 1 Pool it gives you.) IDK anything about tournaments but if players are "stalling for the last 20 minutes, grinding slightly to get to lunge range, go for an oust and trust the table to time out before others have time to react" [Kraus] then maybe just the threat of holding onto the Edge for a VP will pressure players to try to bleed - if only to prevent another player from getting a VP. Similarly, if "timeouts in finals usually happen because finalists tend to be more conservative than usual, and therefore neither do they want to be ousted (the understandable "primum vivere") nor are they willing to let another Methuselah oust their prey." [Damnans] then make not bleeding your prey (via the pressure of holding the Edge for a VP) a dangerous option. Gangrel. Noddist. Camarilla. Once each turn, LivesByProxy may burn 1 blood to lose Protean until the end of the turn and gain your choice of superior Auspex , Obfuscate , or Potence for the current action.

Acknowledge VP in the final, even without a GW. Provide some additional prize, or a bonus to player ranking or whatever, but the goal of the game should still be to maximize VPs. Bottom line: if you want finals to look like VTES, make them follow the normal rules of VTES. Alternatively, for multi-day tournaments, there could be an optional rule to waive the time limit in finals. If they want to grind it out, then let them grind to death . Might not look like tournament VTES anymore, but it will look a lot of home games.

As I already said on Facebook, poor time management is actually one of the aspects of bad play. And since bad play is not illegal, it is really up to the players to improve their playing skills. V:EKN Website Coordinator

> Damnans wrote: > As I already said on Facebook, poor time management is actually one of the aspects of bad play. And since bad play is not illegal, it is really up to the players to improve their playing skills. > Sadly, one cannot improve the time management of other players. I don’t disagree with your statement, but it sidesteps the real issue. Stalling is a problem in other games too, like MtG; some players will spend several minutes shuffling or pretending to think something over, just to play the clock. Oneself playing quickly won’t stop other players from stalling.

> Snodig wrote: > > > Damnans wrote: > > As I already said on Facebook, poor time management is actually one of the aspects of bad play. And since bad play is not illegal, it is really up to the players to improve their playing skills. > > > Sadly, one cannot improve the time management of other players. > I don’t disagree with your statement, but it sidesteps the real issue. > Stalling is a problem in other games too, like MtG; some players will spend several minutes shuffling or pretending to think something over, just to play the clock. > Oneself playing quickly won’t stop other players from stalling. > Poor time management is legal (because it's bad play), whereas stalling is illegal (because it's cheating). The former, like other aspects of bad play, are up to the player and their co-players (through advice) to fix. However, the latter is for the judge to fix, for example, by adding more time to the current game and issuing the proper penalty to the infractor. V:EKN Website Coordinator

> Non-existant user wrote: > Acknowledge VP in the final, even without a GW. Provide some additional prize, or a bonus to player ranking or whatever, but the goal of the game should still be to maximize VPs. > This needs unpacking. 1) The goal of the game is not to maximize VPs. The goal of the game is to win. If you can win by getting 3 VPs (for example), nothing in the game forces you to get 5 VPs. If you are telling people that the goal of the game is to maximize VPs, you are doing something wrong. It is not. 2) The fact that everyone (except the winner) comes joint second was introduced in the final to address specific problems with table splitting and king-making that were considered problematic. The fact that one player could sacrifice their chance of coming first in order to come second, ad everyone else would come third (or however, the bottom three split out) was not at all popular, and caused significant issues and complaints - hence the change. Re-introducing these issues will cause the same problems as in the past. This can get particularly awkward when it affects prizes (whether fixed orders of prizes exist, or they're selected in winning order etc.). 3) Telling players that VPs count does pretty little to de-incentivize players relying on the tie-breaker of previous ranking. Why? a) Whoever is in first place - as determined by the current table state, and previous rankings - would still n general be happy with the game timing out. They win. (This could be the player ranked first with no ousts. Or it could be the player who has secured exactly one oust when no-one else has, irrespective of ranking. etc.) b) Currently, if games are timing out with everyone on zero, all the players who aren't ranked first already have an incentive to score one or more VPs, because it puts them in the position of winning the tournament! They already have an even bigger incentive to score VPs. There are two major suggestions that have been made in the past, but which have issues with them: 1) The final must finish - no time-limit. This can cause significant practical issues - how do people know when they can go home? Will they miss the last train? If they car-shared with a non-finalist, does the non-finalist have to hang round for hours and hours too? 2) The winner must win, using the normal Table Win rules from the earlier rounds. They therefore can't win with fewer than 2 VPs. This can mean that a tournament has no winner - everyone in the final comes second, if you like. This is potentially interesting, but has a couple of side effects. a) People may try to deny you the win out of spite for a deal broken etc. This may get ugly. This can of course already happen, but it's somewhat easier here, and so may require more interventions from a judge. b) If White Wolf (or Black Chantry, or whoever) want to offer a Special Prize for a tournament like the winner being drawn as the Archbishop of Lisbon in the next expansion, it's somewhat disappointing if they don't get a winner. It's also something of an anti-climax for, say, a continental championship, or other big tournament - dozens of MEthuselahs assembled from around the globe and nobody won.

Ok well, I think we all agree on the problem and not quite on the solution. I would advocate removing the seeding advantage after the seatings have been chosen, not limiting the victory to GW for obvious reasons - time issues for the players and venue, favoring some decktypes over others, etc - but of course it poses the question of ties, either if no one makes a VP of if more than one make one VP. 2 players with 2 VP could happen too but I don't think I've ever seen that on finals. If no one wins, well, we're all 2nd, we get less ranking points, and maybe prize has to be distributed accordingly. And the ones who tie with at least 1 VP could be tied for 1st ? Or they would be second and the rest 3rd ? Anyway it works. On a regular tournament I don't think it's a real problem if there is no winner. But yes, on Championships and tournaments with a really special prize this could be a problem. So what, no champion this year ? Well, maybe that would mean that the previous year's champion still holds the title. And how bad would that be, really ? Anticlimatic for sure, but not really bad in itself... And if WW wants to draw an Archbishop, well, either they will choose the most charismatic - then I get my chances - or throw a dice and pick one. Who cares ? The others didn't deserve it anyway. And those questions put aside, it would be a real incentive for everyone to play. the only drawback I could see is if players who can make only 1 VP decided they don't care to be second (or first ?) ex-aequo and don't play to win anymore... But that would be silly. I think this would have its merits.

I don't like randomly picking a winner. You are not playing 8 hours to have someone win randomly, it discredits the whole tournament rules. The top seed player will play slowly from start to finish (unless a VP goes away for someone else). People tend to notice it when there is 10 minutes left, but it is true throughout the whole game. What is annoying is that other players usually play at a slow pace during the first hour too, as if it was a gentlemen's club reunion, or as if the final was to last forever. One option I like is to hide the time at the table. Players who don't know if they are close to the end tend to anticipate it and play faster naturally, which is better if you want to avoid a time-limit. Also, everybody will be more focused on the speed of the game. How many times did I think "man, this guy is slow but well, there's more than one hour left, maybe it's just temporary. Maybe he'll be faster on the next turns. Also, I don't want to annoy people". If I don't know there is more than one hour left, I will be more prone to tell him: "hurry up a little please". Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

Has anybody ever used a clock? Clock is a measuring device, which if operated correctly can give you information of the amount time each player uses. Just my 50 cents. Have a cold long night, Jeroen van Oort Dutch National Coördinator

> Oortje wrote: > Has anybody ever used a clock? Clock is a measuring device, which if operated correctly can give you information of the amount time each player uses. > How do you measure time when A is waiting for B's answer while C try to convince B to do something ? Let's say you manage to measure it, what do you do next ? Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Ankha wrote: > I don't like randomly picking a winner. You are not playing 8 hours to have someone win randomly, it discredits the whole tournament rules. > Then get rid of the final. Make a final Swiss Round pairing for everyone. The player who got a GW on the highest table wins the tournament. Or just count the total score of all rounds.

> Non-existant user wrote: > > > Ankha wrote: > > I don't like randomly picking a winner. You are not playing 8 hours to have someone win randomly, it discredits the whole tournament rules. > > > Then get rid of the final. Make a final Swiss Round pairing for everyone. The player who got a GW on the highest table wins the tournament. Or just count the total score of all rounds. > Finals make the whole thing more climactic. You can seriously get 0vps round one due to some overdone cheese played by your predator, take the whole table round 2, then anything can happen in the finals, and that's only a standard 2R+F setup. Seed should allow you strategic seating in finals. If that's not enough of an advantage/reward for playing well in the previous rounds, then oh well. I agree that the current setup will reward meticulous slow play for top seed, and that the person in 5th by outcome of a die roll has it in their best interest to play faster. Even in a deck where it's a slower deck by nature, you REALLY need it to play out and get set up, because first seed is cool with everyone being 12 cards deep in their deck in 2.5 hours and getting the win. The top seed guy/gal also knows that it is in their best interest to over-analyze and excessively evaluate every choice.

I agree with all of this. If player are good and if judges are experienced, top seed is a curse. I saw a few years ago a final of a big tournament (30+ players) where the player in top seed did a villein for 10 + giants blood on his Stanislava in the beginning of the game. People kept playing like it never happened and like there was no seeds. Obviously, he won.

> kschaefer wrote: > Have higher seed only affect seating. Have ties determine the winner randomly from among the tied players. There is no longer an incentive for anyone to not gain VPs in that scenario. If the table times out completely, with .5 VPs, then you have a 20% chance of winning via die roll. > I agree with this. I find the finals to be less compelling than initial rounds, in general. Allow tournaments to end in ties. I realize that many tournaments would not have a winner , a very eternal struggle thing to me. If you want to win play fast or dominate. The concern I have is how the current finals structure interacts with the play to win notion. There is no maximizing vp in finals so it just turns into a lot of play to lose kingmaking.

In regular tournaments you don't even need "a winner" ! But even if I could conceive it I agree that having either no Champion or one determined by a dice would be anticlimatic, to say the least.

> Orpheus wrote: > In regular tournaments you don't even need "a winner" ! > > But even if I could conceive it I agree that having either no Champion or one determined by a dice would be anticlimatic, to say the least. > Do you find the time out tiebreaker champion a worthy conclusion? To me it's much like drawing a name out of a hat.

I would imagine I would not be thrilled with a 2/2/1 split in the finals being given a random die roll to determine who wins. Not to say it's ideal that you can know you will win by engineering a 2/2/1, but it's interesting. Of course, could limit the random winner thingy to only games that time out, then you only need to worry about 1.5/1.5/.5 or .5s or something really weird (Life Boon, Withdrawing). So, you get people to finish games. I should try to figure out a way to build more aggro decks given my personal limitations just so my games end. But, I've probably forgotten how to play such decks, so I'd just lose more often than I already do. Traveller Card Game

Earlier performance in previous rounds is a solid way of breaking ties. It also promotes maximizing your VPs in the preliminary rounds making you less eager to try to maneuver your friends/ decks you deem suitable for finals opposition to the finals. Finnish Politics!

Exactly what problem are we trying to fix here? The TWDA currently lists 54 decks from 2018 with the vp count from the final table. The breakdown is 5vp: 5 decks 4vp: 18 decks 3vp: 15 decks 2.5vp: 4 decks (still a GW deciding the winner) 2vp: 3 decks 1.5vp: 8 decks For 2017, the TWDA includes 65 decks with the final VP score, and in 46 of those the winner got 3vps or more in the final, and only 7 decks are listed where the winner had less than 2 vps (people can extract the detailed breakdown themselves). This of course excludes those tournaments for which the TWD entry does not include the deck list, the last couple of reports which have not yet been published as part of the TWDA and all the tournaments that don't generate a TWDA entry, but the easily available data hardly seems indicative of a major issue. -- National Coordinator South Africa

> drnlmza wrote: > Exactly what problem are we trying to fix here? > > This of course excludes those tournaments for which the TWD entry does not include the deck list, the last couple of reports which have not yet been published as part of the TWDA and all the tournaments that don't generate a TWDA entry, but the easily available data hardly seems indicative of a major issue. > That is great data. What we would need to see in order to truly determine if we have a "problem" is the seed of the winning player. My hypothesis is: A majority of #1 seed players win tournaments. I believe the benefit of choosing your seat combined with the tie-breaking means an overwhelming advantage for the first seed. This advantage can be reduced and still benefit the best player without making 1st seed a much higher incidence of victory.

> drnlmza wrote: > This of course excludes those tournaments for which the TWD entry does not include the deck list, the last couple of reports which have not yet been published as part of the TWDA and all the tournaments that don't generate a TWDA entry, but the easily available data hardly seems indicative of a major issue. > But we have the Archon files for all of these events. > DJHedgehog wrote: > My hypothesis is: A majority of #1 seed players win tournaments. I believe the benefit of choosing your seat combined with the tie-breaking means an overwhelming advantage for the first seed. This advantage can be reduced and still benefit the best player without making 1st seed a much higher incidence of victory. > Using the raw Archon data, we could easily determine this. Ankha, is it possible to get a dump of all of the Archon data or the data as it exists in the ratings system and answer these questions and concerns with stats?

Isn’t it natural to assume that the player with the best skill/deck is both top seed and the winner? The statistic isn’t very useful on its own. What would be of interest is whether that player won in a tie-breaker or by VP.

My concern is more how play to win interacts with an environment where there is no maximizing vp, only table win influenced by tie breaker. It forces bad play and turns good play into bad play. Remove tiebreaker. Allow finals to end without winner. Have 2nd to 5th place. You know, just like the every other game.

> Mewcat wrote: > Have 2nd to 5th place. > Could you explain how you would address the issues that this created, and that the current rules are intended to prevent?

> jamesatzephyr wrote: > > > Mewcat wrote: > > Have 2nd to 5th place. > > > Could you explain how you would address the issues that this created, and that the current rules are intended to prevent? > I assume you mean deal making of some sort? Please explain the issue that the current rules are intended to prevent.

> Snodig wrote: > Isn’t it natural to assume that the player with the best skill/deck is both top seed and the winner? > The statistic isn’t very useful on its own. > What would be of interest is whether that player won in a tie-breaker or by VP. > I don't think it's out of the question to assume the top seed may be the best positioned player at the tournament, either through skill or deck selection. Due to the nature of the Jyhad, it's really hard to say those things lead to consistent tournament wins though. We would need to see a whole host of data to get a real picture, honestly. I think the VP breakdown and the seed of the winner of each tourney will start to tell a story we can dig deeper into.

> Mewcat wrote: > Please explain the issue that the current rules are intended to prevent. > I've already done so, including in this very thread.

I will look for it when I have time

I found it. So people didn't like deal making and king making. I'm not sure why we would allow them in initial rounds but find them odious in the finals other than the desire to make vtes into a competitive game in the finals to make the entire enterprise seem competitive by association. This entire concept is logically flawed. We are using this formula in the finals to but the tie breaker is based on results obtained with all the king making and deal making allowed, there by making the event some amalgam of social group activity and competitive activity. Finals should have same rules as rest of games, it just contains the 5 best seeds.

> Mewcat wrote: > I found it. So people didn't like deal making and king making. I'm not sure why we would allow them in initial rounds but find them odious in the finals other than the desire to make vtes into a competitive game in the finals to make the entire enterprise seem competitive by association. This entire concept is logically flawed. > So you're re-introducing the same problems that existed in the past, and handwaving that they're not a problem. Even though they were a problem . Even though they were sufficiently a problem that the rules were changed. And even though until today, you didn't understand that this problem existed - which you would have done if you'd even bothered to read the whole thread! Your entire approach is flawed in every way.

> kschaefer wrote: > > > DJHedgehog wrote: > > My hypothesis is: A majority of #1 seed players win tournaments. I believe the benefit of choosing your seat combined with the tie-breaking means an overwhelming advantage for the first seed. This advantage can be reduced and still benefit the best player without making 1st seed a much higher incidence of victory. > > > Using the raw Archon data, we could easily determine this. > > Ankha, is it possible to get a dump of all of the Archon data or the data as it exists in the ratings system and answer these questions and concerns with stats? > Why bother busy Ankha about this. DJHedgehog can easily dig from this forum's event calendar the info regarding points for each tournament. You know, to prove his hypothesis. It'll take little bit of time and some effort but you can't expect to make some hypothesis and have others spend some hours of their time to prove it....¨ An example: www.vekn.net/event-calendar/event/8841 Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > Why bother busy Ankha about this. > > DJHedgehog can easily dig from this forum's event calendar the info regarding points for each tournament. You know, to prove his hypothesis. It'll take little bit of time and some effort but you can't expect to make some hypothesis and have others spend some hours of their time to prove it....¨ > > An example: > www.vekn.net/event-calendar/event/8841 > Because I had hoped that Ankha could provide all of the Archons in a single zip file or have a way to access the rating system that would avoid the need to spend hours going through the Event Calendar. If those methods are not possible, then the Even Calendar it is.

> Lönkka wrote: > > > kschaefer wrote: > > > > > DJHedgehog wrote: > > > My hypothesis is: A majority of #1 seed players win tournaments. I believe the benefit of choosing your seat combined with the tie-breaking means an overwhelming advantage for the first seed. This advantage can be reduced and still benefit the best player without making 1st seed a much higher incidence of victory. > > > > > > > > Using the raw Archon data, we could easily determine this. > > > > Ankha, is it possible to get a dump of all of the Archon data or the data as it exists in the ratings system and answer these questions and concerns with stats? > > > Why bother busy Ankha about this. > > DJHedgehog can easily dig from this forum's event calendar the info regarding points for each tournament. You know, to prove his hypothesis. It'll take little bit of time and some effort but you can't expect to make some hypothesis and have others spend some hours of their time to prove it....¨ > > An example: > www.vekn.net/event-calendar/event/8841 > Hey man, don't drag me into this. I made a hypothesis, not a call to action. @jamesatzephyr I agree with mewcat. What you're saying is that the base game, which allows for king-making and garbage deals is fine to create a seeding structure. That same game was so terrible that we had to change the finals structure? Seems like flawed logic to me.

> @jamesatzephyr I agree with mewcat. What you're saying is that the base game, which allows for king-making and garbage deals is fine to create a seeding structure. That same game was so terrible that we had to change the finals structure? Seems like flawed logic to me. > I don't understand why bring up king-making and garbage deals up for preliminary rounds, where those are exactly not beneficial there. You want to maximize your GW, followed up with VPs, in preliminaries to get to the top seed. If you make garbage deals, you play to lose. Very similarly, and as stated at the very beginning of the topic, if you plan for anything else than maximizing your VPs in a final, you are playing to lose. The only exception is the top seed. 1st, maximize it all to get into the top seed. 2nd, maximize your VPs in the final in case you didn't make it top seed. ...or, actually, only disregard the 2nd step if other players are letting you win. On my part the question was more or less settled already: when you know for a fact who's going to win the finals (that's not you) and don't act accordingly, you are in fact playing poorly. Before players understand this and play accordingly it will be hard to say if the structure is ACTUALLY flawed. We'll get plenty, plenty of more info on how it all evolves from EC. I'm more than willing to re-evaluate the topic after that. Bottom line: you can't force people to play well. If they make a bad evaluation or mess up a beneficial two-way they had reason to get into at a given time, they made a mistake and the better player won. Bad deals and king-making are not part of the topic, as far as I see it. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

I'll try to provide some data. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> jamesatzephyr wrote: > And even though until today, you didn't understand that this problem existed - which you would have done if you'd even bothered to read the whole thread! > > Your entire approach is flawed in every way. > All false. I realized the problem as evidenced by how I immediately recognized it even though you were too rude to have a discussion with me. It is understood that people dont read all parts of a thread but I politely engaged you. You have chosen an appeal to authority. Congratulations. @Kraus The issue that I have which I may have stated poorly is that the finals does not provide a reasonable win opportunity to most participants while denying any secondary objectives. In many cases it would be proper to call it very early. 'I'm 4th or 5th seed and my thin chance dissipated so now I xfer out and go home.' Modedit\\ Consecutive quotes fit the same post.

The next flare of arguments that targets another forum user and/or their rhetoric will result in closing this topic. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

It doesn't mater which seed you enter the finals (granted the st one has the benefits and higher ones win tie breaking) if you have a good deck, and you should if you are in the finals, you just play it to the maximum and try to oust more players than others and you're home safe! Sometimes even the 5th seeder has a deck that more or less will trump easily the rest of the table. Finnish Politics!

Mewcat said : "Do you find the time out tiebreaker champion a worthy conclusion? To me it's much like drawing a name out of a hat." Well it's not the same at all, in the sense that it rewards the player who made the best results in the Tournament. That in itself doesn't disturb me, it's the consequences it has on finals which does. I agree with James that dealings in the preliminaries and in the finals are not the same at all. I've known the time when you could deal in finals, it had some good aspects but sometimes had dire consequences, so on the whole I think we're way better off now. And still some way to go... Modedit\ \No double posting.

> Kraus wrote: > The next flare of arguments that targets another forum user and/or their rhetoric will result in closing this topic. > You should instead aim to remove the posts in violation of the code of conduct, than lock a useful and interesting topic imo. As to the topic, I cannot help but feel that bleed bounce is partly at fault for slower gameplay, because the threat of it prevents players applying consistent pressure to their prey. Smoking craters tell no tales. —Tex talks Battletech

> Bloodartist wrote: > > > Kraus wrote: > > The next flare of arguments that targets another forum user and/or their rhetoric will result in closing this topic. > > > You should instead aim to remove the posts in violation of the code of conduct, than lock a useful and interesting topic imo. > Thank you for your feedback, but moderation is not up to debate. Reference from Forum Guidelines: > Forum wrote: > Moderators and admins maintain these guidelines and see to that they are followed. Their word is final. > "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> Bloodartist wrote: > > > Kraus wrote: > > The next flare of arguments that targets another forum user and/or their rhetoric will result in closing this topic. > > > You should instead aim to remove the posts in violation of the code of conduct, than lock a useful and interesting topic imo. > > As to the topic, I cannot help but feel that bleed bounce is partly at fault for slower gameplay, because the threat of it prevents players applying consistent pressure to their prey. > But that isn't much different than in preliminary rounds; There are of course ways around it that nobody uses, but the fact that stealthbleed has other methods and Cog/network strategies can typically hit the VP but seldom sweep by using DI2 on a deflection/Telepathic Misdirection during their preys turn makes the whole thing more specialized than that. As to the thread as a whole, of course stalling is up to each judge to determine and stop. But as a career level dweller at finals who never wins them, I've noticed more unjustified slow play from people who never make finals than those who are there often. What I classify as "unjustified " is taking the time to inquire about and check game states that have little to nothing to do with what a player would do. Such as; counting deflection in preys discard pile while playing Nos breed n boon before calling KRC, asking your grand predator for their pool total before rushing your preys minions, or asking If a media location can target allies when there are no allies on the table. Luckily, these examples haven't happened in awhile. The other issue is that I have yet to see a solid suggestion for a new system that doesn't just return to problems from years back. Even a situational additive that encourages players to get a single vp (that helps compared to current setup) hasn't come up. So, if you are at a final, know the math. Seed one has to just not die while someone else is winning. Everyone else has a goal of how many people need ousted by you to win. The current system isn't the first one, and I vaguely recall hating the last one more.

Here are the questions that I'd like to use results data to answer empirically. 1. What percentage of preliminary rounds timeout? 2. What percentage of final rounds timeout? 3. What percentage of preliminary rounds end in GWs? In ties? 4. What percentage of final round end in GWs? In ties? 5. For final rounds, what is the percentage of wins by each seed? 6. For final rounds, what percentage of wins by that seed were the result of tiebreaker? What I think the answers to these questions can tell us: We can determine if there is a statistical outlier between preliminary and final rounds in terms of timeouts, GWs, and ties. Are the rates as we would expect? As the topic of this thread asserts? That finals timeout more because they promote stalling? How important seeding is in winning. If we remove the wins based on ties, does seeding matter? This will answer DJHedgehog's question about whether seating choice affects the finals in a statistically significant way. How much seeding really matters. If we consider the finals won by tiebreaker are we more likely to see the winner be someone other than the first seed? This may give us a clue as to whether first seeds are lounging about because they've already won when the game starts unless someone ousts. We can probably cut this data down even further and do geographical analysis on it. Are there more timeouts in Europe, NA, SA or Pacific? Are the finals in line with the rates of GWs, ties, and timeouts in these regions? In other words, do Europeans finish more games in GWs in the preliminary rounds than other regions and if so, do the final rounds have the same rates? Maybe that would clue us into overly conservative play in the final rounds. Mind you, I'm not making any assertions about European play, just providing a possible example data point that we could analyze. We began this thread all somewhat believing that stated premise. I think we have the data to find out the answers and properly inform ourselves. Once we know those answers we can determine what, if anything, we need to do about it. Ankha, not sure if there's anyway I could help you gather this data, but please let me know if I can. Happy to write SQL queries or churn Excel data as necessary.

We do not store the round results, only the tournament results... There is no way to know how many rounds timed out. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

For future TDWA entries the organizers could attach the Archon file to the post. If someone would like to start collating the data, it'd be there. "Oh, to the Hades with the manners! He's a complete bastard, and calling him that insults bastards everywhere!" -Nalia De-Arnise garourimgazette.wordpress.com/ www.vekn.net/forum-guidelines

> Ankha wrote: > We do not store the round results, only the tournament results... There is no way to know how many rounds timed out. > Can you query the data base where the archons go? Does its schema hold the tables for each archon? Can you query how many total VP's each table had? I know I'm stating obvious things and I don't want to teach the priest how to pray, but I'm covering all the bases here.

> DJHedgehog wrote: > My hypothesis is: A majority of #1 seed players win tournaments. I believe the benefit of choosing your seat combined with the tie-breaking means an overwhelming advantage for the first seed. This advantage can be reduced and still benefit the best player without making 1st seed a much higher incidence of victory. > Becuase I had some free time today, I wrote some (very hack'ish) scripts to download and parse events from the vekn.net site to get some better data. I've attached the parsed data for 2018 as a zipped csv file: File Attachment: File Name: 2018.zip File Size:2 KB . There may very well be missed events and parsing errors, but the events I spot checked are correct, so it's at least partially correct. The scripts are at gitlab.com/drnlmza/VEKN-Archon-Stats if other people want to play with them. For 2018, the file has 128 tournaments, and some brief stats from playing with the data: The first wins 32% of the time, the second wins 25% of the time and the remaining wins are almost equally divided amongst seed 3-5. 74 % of the finals end with the winner having at least 2.5 VPs - in these, 1st seed wins 30% of the time, 2nd seed wins 23 % of the tournaments, and the other seeds are still about equal for the rest 82% ended with the winner having at least 2 vps. Only 4 tournaments ended with the winner getting 0.5 vps. Obviously, the 1st seed won all of that. I'm personally not seeing a lot of evidence of a significant stalling problem in those figures. -- National Coordinator South Africa

Thanks a lot for your work. Continental Finals and other big tournament Finals usually have good players on them and more visibility. Players are more careful and more suspicious. It is not intentional slow play your cheating, imo.

> drnlmza wrote: > 82% ended with the winner having at least 2 vps. > > Only 4 tournaments ended with the winner getting 0.5 vps. Obviously, the 1st seed won all of that. > I think this puts to bed the stalling issue with respect to finals. It sucks that some of the more high profile events don't have a winner, but in general, there appears to be little cause for alarm. Thank you for taking the time to grab this data. I'll dig into it more as soon as I get the chance.

> kschaefer wrote: > I think this puts to bed the stalling issue with respect to finals. It sucks that some of the more high profile events don't have a winner, but in general, there appears to be little cause for alarm. > I disagree. This is the vitrine of the game, whether we like it or not. How can we have better games on Youtube? Smaller tournaments being more fun is not going to help if people cannot see it.

> Non-existant user wrote: > This is the vitrine of the game, whether we like it or not. > So, that was 1 of 4 games that ended in 0.5 VP timeout, according to the number of timeouts above. We're supposed to change the entire tournaments structure for statistically insignificant outcomes? Talk about the tail wagging the dog. > Non-existant user wrote: > How can we have better games on Youtube? Smaller tournaments being more fun is not going to help if people cannot see it. > I think you answered your own question. Put the smaller tournaments on YouTube.

> Brum wrote: > > > Ankha wrote: > > We do not store the round results, only the tournament results... There is no way to know how many rounds timed out. > > > Can you query the data base where the archons go? > > Does its schema hold the tables for each archon? > > Can you query how many total VP's each table had? > The archons are deleted once processed, do we don't have the data about the preliminary rounds. Prince of Paris, France Ratings Coordinator, Rules Director

> Non-existant user wrote: > How can we have better games on Youtube? Smaller tournaments being more fun is not going to help if people cannot see it. > No one is stopping you from putting ALL the tournaments you attend to YouTube. I actually think that everyone and their Grandsire would applaud if you did! Finnish Politics!

> Lönkka wrote: > > > Non-existant user wrote: > > How can we have better games on Youtube? Smaller tournaments being more fun is not going to help if people cannot see it. > > > No one is stopping you from putting ALL the tournaments you attend to YouTube. > > I actually think that everyone and their Grandsire would applaud if you did! > I honestly would if I had the camera for it.

To quote Lennier: "Faith manages" Every smartphone has one. And you can get proper cameras for not extraorbitant amount too. This ain't 80's... Finnish Politics!

We'll see what I can manage No promises.

Let's all use GoPros as Edges for every tournament until this time next year! The only drawback is probable motion sickness upon viewing.