SuperLadle Discussion - cont. from time change thread

[Concord]

there's nothing complicated about it, and if a league were to happen, that's how it should happen, and a league was played based upon the same basic principles. There were some definite errors in execution unrelated to those principles, and those errors no doubt contributed to the league's failure. That was my conclusion at the time, and I still think I was right in saying I was wrong. That league occurred almost 3 years ago, and came 2 years after the last AFL, there was an effort at the end of 2011, but I think it was based on just 1 match per month, and the second matches never occurred. So maybe it's time for another effort.

I think the advantage the Ladle has is that it is definitive and it is too short to lose interest while it is taking place. Teams and players drop out of leagues over the course of months, but they don't drop out between rounds. Drop outs and forfeits are a main concern for me, because they kill the legitimacy. The 2nd place team of the FPL had a 40% winning percentage, because they were tied for 2nd with wins, and the first tie breaker was games played. The 3rd place team wasn't penalized with forfeits, because in the system of arranging times, the times just never got arranged. It's also awkward to expect team to show up just so they can claim a forfeit. There's no fun in that. And I don't think games played was a stupid tie breaker. A team could simply have "failed to play" games against teams that could beat them, and walk away with a pretty winning percentage.

Anyway, I've been trying to arrange a 3v3 deathmatch league, with something like this idea, but haven't gotten servers. The idea here is to have teams choose time slots, and then find opponents based on that, rather than selecting opponents first. This works better with a lot of teams, which a 3v3 league without specialized settings should be able to draw

[Lucifer]

In this respect, the Ladle is basically a season unto itself. I'm not aware of any team sport or game where multiple seasons or tournaments are used to base another tournament on, and it's for this reason of team continuity.

Fencing tournaments feed into higher level tournaments, resulting in the Olympic tournament. (Teams too)

For that matter, quite a few of the Olympic events are the culmination of a series of tournaments held first within individual countries, then on a continent, then in a world league of sorts.

[Mkay1]

The same applies for competitive golf, on any level. You gain *points* for your finish in certain tournaments, or you can qualify from a single event. The Ryder cup (US vs. EU match play event) is am event that happens every 4 years. The qualifying period, is based on points, which were acumulated over the previous 3 seasons or so. This format, however does not yield to the current Selye of play from the ladle. I'm thinking about the NASCAR points race, and even Fedex cup in golf. Points are based on positions out of say, 100 participants. Ladle only places the top 2 teams. The position in teams that are eliminated quickly is impossible to be distinguished. But the key part of this is that in these two events the golfers are independent of each other. This is not entirely (seeding is used to prevent this) the case in the ladle. The two best teams of a ladle could face each other, one getting first place, the other tied for last. The fastest two racers certainly don't have this big a gap in points awarded. I don't see it being possible to have a truly accurate point system can be derived so the top 6 teams get to play. The only thing I can think of as an example relating to ladle would be Tennis. There are top ranked players in the world, however they play matches that the results of the competitors isn't independent. The only problem is this is undoubtedly a very complex equation featuring weighted tournaments to put more emphasis on majors.

The key to making this work is adaption. The first time is highly unlikely to be successful. Rules need to be changed as more 'seasons' go on. As long as this doesn't get abandoned and it undergoes changes, then this will eventually be a hit.

From iPhone - sorry if choppy.

[sinewav]

I feel like the Bowl should be an extension of Ladle and intimately tied to it. Let's build on it's success instead of making a parallel system.

One complaint about Ladle is that its value is diminished in it's frequency. A larger event every three months, to me, doesn't go far enough. Once or twice a year, definitely. This is perfect opportunity for a seasonal tournament.

I don't think rosters are a problem. The best teams usually have the most stable rosters anyway. Like Concord pointed out, as long as we have measures against the occasional All-Star Teams who railroad everyone we should be good to go. I don't see anything wrong with using Ladle stats to determine performance, but let's just try not to split hairs. Even with Concord's two different methods on the previous page, I don't see them as significantly different. The better teams are still on top and weaker ones on bottom. Phytotron's bracket is also good IMO. Let's just pick the easiest and get on with it. In the end, the best 6 teams will rise to the top by season's end and we'll have an intense tournament no matter how they match up.

[Concord]

I'd recommend this one as the qualifier:

Code: Select all

ladle score + ladle wins * 2

regarding format, the finals should be best of 5, with the 3rd and 4th games played in a server of the other continent

[sinewav]

Good enough! I wouldn't be too hard to go back and keep a running total of rounds played to our stats page for the purpose of calculating "Ladle score." I'll look into that later. Also, I don't think the x2 modifier will make an important difference, but whatever.

And I agree on your suggestion for the finals with server changes.

[Phytotron]

In this respect, the Ladle is basically a season unto itself. I'm not aware of any team sport or game where multiple seasons or tournaments are used to base another tournament on, and it's for this reason of team continuity.

Fencing tournaments feed into higher level tournaments, resulting in the Olympic tournament. (Teams too)

For that matter, quite a few of the Olympic events are the culmination of a series of tournaments held first within individual countries, then on a continent, then in a world league of sorts.

Well, individuals games are irrelevant for what I hope should be obvious reasons—responding to Mkay here, too.

In the case of feeder tournaments, you're talking about a completely different kind of structure. Individuals or teams aren't playing in multiple tournaments at the same level, rosters are constant, and it's usually all within one season. Like I said, each Ladle is effectively its own season.

As for the Olympics, a couple things. When you're talking about, for example, the "US gymnastics/swimming/track and field team," those are still (mostly) individuals events. Individuals compete against one another in qualifying tournaments, and the winners combine to form the "team" representing that country. In the actual Olympic events, they're still competing as individuals (except in instances like the relay; but there again, they qualified as individuals first). So again irrelevant.

Secondly, in the case of the actual team sports, those are constituted by virtue of a selection committee, not tournaments. What you end up with is basically an all-star team.

But whatever.


Anyway, I still don't think what you guys are talking about—basing some super-tournament off the existing Ladle structure—makes any sense, but whatever, your time and energy. Just trying to offer some clarity where I saw a mess.

[Olive]

Perhaps the numbers don't back my statement up, but I noticed the spring and autumn months to be most important in ladles, concerning competition, overall fortress activity and number of ladle participants.

The superladle/bowl should, imo, be held at either the end of the season (lets say november) or the beginning of the season (february). Taking june, juli and august as a summer-break and december and january as a winter break, considering holidays etc.

[sinewav]

Perhaps the numbers don't back my statement up...

Maybe they do, I can't quite tell from:
http://wiki.armagetronad.org/index.php/ ... ticipation

Concord: you have the raw data for that chart, right? Can you determine the best range for a season based on past attendance?

[Concord]

I don't, but I assume Zimblunk does

I'm going to do some more detailed analysis on participation, partly because it might be relevant and partly because I'm curious. It might not be just a number of total teams we care about, it might be something like percentage of teams that remain the same over the season. Or, if we were planning to have the Bowl and that month's Ladle be exclusive of each other, then we would want total teams, so that Ladle remains well attended.

[Titanoboa]

No matter where we put the bowl (and thus the season/pre-season), it's going to change a lot regarding team/clan changes and whatever we choose, the bowl will determine which months are most competitive, not the other way around.
My point is that we shouldn't be over-analytical about the past, and focus on opinions rather than (kind of abstract imo) facts.

Two possible options:

• April-September season, bowl on 2nd Sunday of September.
• October-March season, bowl on 2nd Sunday of March

Or (kinda) like Olive suggested

• September-April season, bowl in April. Mid-season break in December & January. May, June, July, August are pre-season.

I'd personally vote for the last one.

[sinewav]

Ok, time to get this conversation flowing again. I'm interested in stats, and how we can use them in Ladle and Bowl.

Prompted by the recent disturbance regarding aliased players and what to do with them, I think the best solution is to take away the incentive to play anonymously. If all our Fortress players are working toward the goal of being the best in a season, then there is no reason to hide. In fact, you'll want as much recognition as possible for your achievements.

The monthly Ladle has become a bore for some. But a reliable monthly tournament is the perfect stage for a much larger tournament based on a season. There is very little in the way of stopping us from doing it, and it will hardly affect the current Ladle rules, organization, participation, etc.

#1. We need a good stats page. The Ladle stats on the wiki is nice because it's easy to read. The stats at generalconsumption are more accurate, but don't tell us anything about a body of time. How long before we can set up a page somewhere with accurate information divided and displayed by season?

#2. We need a season. I don't see why we even need an off-season; I would just run one right up against the rest. But, I guess there is a benefit for having time off for players to try out new relationships. I'm going to say 9 months is good. It needs to be long enough so teams can't join mid-season and take over the game. Long-standing teams should be rewarded for their commitment.

The season should end with the tournament either taking place of the final Ladle or later in the same month. I don't think it really matters which, but I do think it matters when. There are some months that absolutely will not work: December & January (holidays), September and April (school). I'm putting my money on November or March. So, we can start in March or July and be in good shape. July to March sounds pretty good. We can even have a poll to decide.

#3. Seeding. We need to look at the stats we have and make a decision on how to use them to pick teams for the playoffs. This is pretty much done, Concord's take on this is meaningful enough if you ask me.

And that's pretty much it. The beauty of this is we need almost no changes to the rules and all the good, reliable teams won't even feel like they are playing a season. The aliased, one-shot teams will be excluded from the Bowl.

[sinewav]

Added two new columns to the yearly stats: Rounds won, Rounds total.

I'm running a poll to see where we can fit a 9-month season.

Hopefully we'll have a good idea how to proceed with this before Ladle 60.

[sinewav]

I've got a mental framework for how this is going to work.

Based on the poll (linked in above post), I think the best span for a season is from August to April. It seems like enthusiasm and participation is highest during those months. We should avoid summer months. And even though people have school work, that seems to be less problematic than cool summer parties where girls and drugs might be involved, haha.

The season is 9 months long. In that time, we will collect stats on every team that plays. We still need to lock down the variables that will determine which teams make the tournament (40% of average number of teams that season?) and how they are seeded. That gives us 3 months of off-season time where players can relax a little.

People are concerned about how the Bowl affects Ladle. I imagine the Bowl being a separate event tied to Ladle occurring on the last Sunday of April, far away from Easter and most school finals (of course, we'll have a Ladle the following Sunday, but I don't see that as a big problem as the season will be over). This way, Ladle continues uninterrupted and no team misses out on Fortress that month.

There should be a few requirements for teams, and this will change one Ladle rule in a superficial way. The Bowl is about teams. We want to see teams stay together and participate in a meaningful way. We don't want teams to jump in mid-season and dominate a few Ladles then go to the Bowl (doesn't seem really fair). And, we don't want players from teams that didn't make the cutoff from piling onto the teams that did.

One team requirement should be that you play 5 month out of the 9 month season. Of course, whatever formula we use for seeding should make it really impractical to play any less than that. One player requirement should be that you played on a team at least 5 times that season to join them in Bowl. This would mean a change to the Ladle rule "The Challenge Board is effectively locked until Ladle starts, after which changes may be made to reflect actual playing situations (scores, server changes, substitutes, no shows)." [7] We will need the Challenge Board to remain unchanged after Ladle starts so we can track who played where. You can still substitute for another team, we just can't have you tacking yourself on to their roster. And that's pretty much the only "change" to Ladle I can think of.

The side effect to these requirements is it also attacks the alias problem in Ladle. Sure, we'll still have aliases, but players will want to be seen and teams will want to be recorded if they plan to play Bowl and have a chance at being crowned "The best in the Year 20XX."

[Jrotc2012]

question though, What about the newer teams and stuff that want to participate, it does not seem as much as a fair advantage to them. even though they would want to do this.