Ladle Fortress 2014 (Discussion)

[Gazelle]

Sine, agreed, i do believe competition is "fun" but isnt the objective to win? and losing sure as hell isnt fun, (which is why i made my original statement) but its also why i can also see your point.

How about this, we are all just going to sit here and argue our points, while others will just sit back and remain silent even if they have an opinion or not..

Lets start a poll.

[sinewav]

Sine, agreed, i do believe competition is "fun" but isnt the objective to win?

Yes the object is to win, but winning only means something if you have to fight for it. As it stands, seeded teams don't work for their opening round victories. On the other hand, rookie teams face certain defeat against them. What kind of competition is that? Why take the time to get a team together when you will be eliminated from the tournament in the first 20 minutes? Yes there will always be total n00b teams who never get anywhere. But we currently have a problem in Ladle Fortress where there is no smooth gradient from rookie to pro -- and seeding perpetuates that. I simply want to reduce the number of horrible opening round match-ups for the benefit of everyone.

Lets start a poll.

I would like to do this the old way, with a vote between Team Leaders (Stage 6 of Ladle Operations).

...not for giving teams first round byes randomly if we have an uneven number.

This is a great point Wildcat. I think simply adjusting !randomteam to distribute ~byes~ and not place seeds would be a great compromise. This way, winning teams still get a free opening round and rookie teams don't walk into a guaranteed loss.

[Gazelle]

Why not do it like a sporting season?

We could have ladle every month for 11 months like we do now, except with no seeding. (Like a regular season)

Then at the end of the year (December) Tally up all the wins etc.. Then have a seeded ladle, aka Bowl.

I think this way everyone gets what they want.

We already have the wiki and everything to help keep track, like we do now.

But that way maybe its more to fight for, playing every ladle to get a good seed at the end of the year and win the finale.

[sinewav]

Why not do it like a sporting season?

You are late,* it was already suggested on Page 2. I support that idea 100%



* why do people jump in without at least scanning the whole thread? I don't understand...

[Tobe]

The objective of Ladle and competition in general is to win, but it is also to have fun while doing it. Having a high ranked team steamroll a lower rank team every opening round is not fun. It's really just dumb considering we play Single Elimination, so if they lose once it is over. In tron, we don't really have the time and commitment to play some form of Pools or Double Elimination, so having seeds really hurt unseeded teams. We might as well be saying that there is a 50% chance that you are not even going to play if you aren't seeded in a 16 team bracket and do not have one of the higher tiered team rosters.

It isn't even really the weaker team's fault for not being as good, it is just the way tron is right now. There isn't a steady flow of new players coming in since Public Fort (both CTWF and Mega Fort) are both pretty much vacant. So now you have stronger teams recruiting already strong players and the weaker teams seeing less applicants and not really having much of a chance for recruiting some new/upcoming genius tronners from the grids because there is no server to really get them from.

Getting rid of the seeds can possibly eliminate the stress of not signing up because "my team is just going to face so and so opening round and lose anyway." Removing the seeds will not be handing weaker teams out wins, it will just provide less cookie-cutter results after brackets are posted, a greater chance for the weaker teams to warm up before facing strong competition, and more room for an exciting upset before finals. It is silly to think removing seeds is just handing out weaker teams wins, and even more silly to feel that seeded teams aren't the ones truly being handed out, more-or-less, free wins each Ladle. It feels good to win and feels even better to know you had a fair shot of at least getting to semis.

Sure, getting rid of seeds will suck for the stronger teams since they are more likely to face a team of equal skill early on, but that also means that the weaker teams will now also get that same opportunity rather than constantly facing a much stronger team first round. This allows for more varied match-ups throughout the season, less chances of blowouts, and more fun for those watching the matches as well as the teams playing. As weaker teams feel they have a better chance of winning each ladle, they may become much more motivated to actually win and seek to improve now that they can actually place sometimes. This also benefits temporary makeshift teams in similar ways.

I understand why we seed (for more quality matches in the finals), but it does not mean it makes the Ladle more fun and fair to all teams. People have been comparing this to real world sports but there are differences in why and how the two are set up they way they are. Seeds in pro sports are technically just a way for companies to make more money because it is more likely for teams with the greatest followings (who are likely the best teams) to end up playing each other near finals, which then equates to more ad revenue. Not only that, pro sports always uses some sort of Pool or Double Elimination system to ensure teams/players get multiple chances of playing even if they lose each match. Ladle doesn't have that, so we need to compensate and find a way to increase the fun aspect of it while still keeping it competitive.

The idea of unseeded Ladles into the eventual seeded Bowl sounds good to me.

[Gazelle]

I actually read that, but my suggestion is a little different, he wants league matches.... I don't.


I still want a competitive ladle every month with a finalist winner at the end.. But at the end of the year, take the best and seed them 1-4 and then fill the rest of the teams in and have a ladle like we do at the current moment.. And whoever wins the seeded ladle(bowl) is declared "best" or w/e u all want to call it..

EXCEPT ladles 1-11 for that year will have NO seeding

The final ladle in December will have seeding.

The league stuff has been tried before and nobody showed up / cared about it.

[sinewav]

I still want a competitive ladle every month with a finalist winner at the end.. But at the end of the year, take the best and seed them 1-4 and then fill the rest of the teams in and have a ladle like we do at the current moment.. And whoever wins the seeded ladle(bowl) is declared "best" or w/e u all want to call it..

The reason why the Bowl season is 9 months and ends in April is because this is what was determined to be "peak activity" in Armagetron. The reason the Bowl doesn't replace the Ladle that month is no one wants to disrupt Ladle that way. But I agree this 11 month season and 1 seeded Ladle is a great idea. It is what we tried to do in the first place, but the idea transformed into the Bowl through our discussion. If everyone wants to start a new, overlapping season next month for a super-seeded-Ladle next December, I don't have any problems duplicating the stats for it.

[Concord]

a principle I'd like to hear people discuss is the principle that the Bowl/Grand Ladle/Super Finale needs to have a larger sample size of competition than a normal ladle.

IMO
Championship tournament match-ups (whatever they are called) need to be more than best of 3 and they need to partly take place in NA, partly in EU. Double elimination is great too, but I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary.

As a basic template I would say Best of 5. First two matches in EU, second two matches in US (or vice versa). The winner of the first match gets to pick the server for the 5th match, if needed.

[sinewav]

Championship tournament match-ups (whatever they are called) need to be more than best of 3 and they need to partly take place in NA, partly in EU. Double elimination is great too, but I wouldn't say it's absolutely necessary.

I totally wouldn't mind this diverging momentarily into a Bowl discussion. We already decided on 4 teams, best of 5. I really like the idea of double-elimination and we can seamlessly add that to the next bowl. Can we really do the server switching mid round without too much delay? Three rounds of play at best-of-5 is going to take a longer than a regular Ladle I think since the teams will be evenly matched and playing conservatively. Maybe the decision needs to be "either double-elim or continent switching?" I would like to do both.

[pike]

As a captain of a "lesser" team I don't really mind if we keep seeding or get rid of it. Like someone pointed out earlier - Ladles are for playing against the best, if I want to play someone of my level I have full month to arrange a game and play it. Seeding is just a minor reason why Ladles and Fortress are not exciting anymore. 7v7 won't be much change either, not for long at least, because really who is going to win it if not the usual suspects?

The problem is that for the last 5 years Fortress hasn't really expanded beyond 16-team-tournament. Doubling that number is what's important, because then we would have to make matches shorter (I doubt any finalist likes current 4+ hour long Ladles) or split the tournament in 2 parts, etc. etc. and even if the new blood won't be winning Ladles instantly they will make a bigger/better competition for the current "weaker" teams.

[Venijn]

Kinda agree with pike, we always felt much better going into Ladle if we had a chance of actually making it past the first round. When you spend so much time trying to get people into a new competition, it's difficult to keep them coming back when they're only playing 2 whitewash matches and then everyone leaves. When we won/got through it made everyone feel awesome and re-energised.

Part of the problem is as pike says, there aren't enough teams, but that's partly to do with the community/clans. Say I wanted to make a new clan now, what are my options in terms of recruitment? If I want to join a clan, where do I go? Many active players belong to the same clans, and most "up-and-comers" are opting to join bigger clans' second team, which most clans pay less attention to than their First 6, further limiting Ladle exposure.

I bet there are Ladle winners out there for sure who don't have that opportunity, it would be nice to see those chances improve and some more clans appearing.

I know it's a bit rich coming from me, but it does bother me a lot.

[INW]

More history: mYm was the final product of a group of people who had been playing together for years under evolving team names. The reason I joined was actually because of CTF, since they were the only Fort team that played other than Rogue Tronners.

Don't worry Sine, woof is wrong. The first time MYM was created, we came from the bottom and came out on top with inexperienced players, it was all due to eckzellent teamwork. Now, the reincarnation of MYM is an entirely different story; we stole every player basically.. but that was when we already had a winning rep. : )

tl;dr remove seeding pls ty

mym clam best clam

[sinewav]

Part of the problem is as pike says, there aren't enough teams, but that's partly to do with the community/clans.

True. We have to face the fact that Armagetron is unlikely to grow significantly in the next few years. It is best to plan the future of Ladle Fortress around the current community's size and commitment.

Somewhere in here is a conversation about the ideal clan/team size. In a perfect world there would be more Fortress teams instead of clans who play Fortress. Does that make sense? The whole '2nd squad' thing doesn't really add much to the game because they usually consist of a clan's 2nd rank players. (I know there are exceptions. T.uNk divides the talent evenly and CT makes an effort too.) Because of this, I would rather see these B-squads form actual teams with players from other B-squads. I have always held the belief that there is a difference between a clan and team and there is no reason you shouldn't be able to play seriously against your clan-mates. Imagine next Ladle CTb and Rd2 made a team and went to the finals. That would be interesting.

This is one of the reason I push for 7v7. If it becomes harder to field a 2nd team perhaps those extra players would form new teams. Of course, it could just mean the super-teams get even larger, but if they grow large enough we can break the game into divisions, and have intra/inter-division tournaments.

It would certainly switch things up a bit.

[Concord]

While I agree that more teams would be fantastic, I think I completely disagree about 7v7 being a possible solution.

One reason clans are large is that they have players that want to play Ladles, and they always need to provide those players a team. However, some players miss enough ladles that they cannot be counted on to show up. To consistently field a team of 6 for a ladle, you need a clan of 8 or 9 or 10. Once you get beyond 10 members, then you might have a case where you have 4 or 5 subs. At that point, it makes sense to just expand to a second team. If we expand to 7v7, big clans will get bigger, and it will be even harder for a new team to get together. Furthermore, adding another player makes it that much harder to organize a team tactically (as well as making the tactics that much more complicated). I agree with those who have said 6v6 should be kept. I think it's ideal for fortress.

The root cause behind the inconsistency with which players show up, is that the ladle is not taken seriously. And at this point (76!, 76 ladles!) who can blame those who don't see the point. Unless you are chasing a three-peat, it's very hard to do anything meaningful in Ladle competitions. People barely congratulate you and basically forget the next day. And they should, because all winning the ladle means is that you won two matches against two other good teams, and sometimes only 1 (see Ladle 74). You could do that any sunday if you organize a couple wars. The long-standing appeal of a league format is that winning a league would be far more meaningful and far more impressive than winning a ladle. Leagues have many other problems, but those problems are mostly caused by people not taking them seriously.

I think part of the dilution of the ladle has come from center attacks. They determine so much of the game, that often the winning team did not outplay their opponent, they just outcentered them. If you can advance in ladles without being better, positions 1-6, than your opponents (or without proving it), why should your opponents respect your victory as meaningful? They shouldn't. Centering is overpowered and overinfluential to match outcomes. We have all been in matches where the centers determine each round. It cheapens the game for the other 10 players on the grid. We should strongly consider changing the map. I would suggest just moving the spawns up a little bit and maybe lengthening the grid as well. Just 15 m. This will mean the tails leave the zone faster, dead tails are less intrusive, bottles can be smaller. Centers won't go away, but they will be reduced in strength. We don't need to eliminate them, they are just a bit OP.

We did this a couple years ago by shrinking hole size. Holes were OP, so we tweaked the game to balance it out. I believe the same thing should be down with centers.

I'm probably going to get a loud backlash on this point from the good centers out there, and that is understandable. It must be great to have so much influence over the match. I don't blame you for yelling at me for suggesting we reduce it. I think, if you really think about it, you will at least understand my reasoning.

[Titanoboa]

ooooo 2 seeds? Makes sure finalists don't face each other until finals next ladle. And pretty much gets rid of the discussed issue of new teams facing seeded beasts (see Math). I like this.

also ooooo 1 seed? Revolutionary! Makes sure winner gets a bye next ladle if there are any. Doesn't change anything else really compared with 0 seeds. I like this.

0 seeds? Full randomization! I like this.

_______________________________________________________________

Math: Using 16 teams as example for simplicity and relevance. Also for the sake of simplicity, I'm assuming there's you - the average team, 11 total noob teams and 4 total pro teams. You always beat the total noob teams and always lose to the total pro teams. (if I chose to make it perfectly accurate I wouldn't be able to do the math and you wouldn't be able to follow it even if I did )

With 0 seeds/full randomization: There's a 4/15 (26.667%) chance you'll face a total pro team and lose in the first round.
=> A 73.3% chance you'll be fine!
(Just for fun: if you do face a noob team in the first round there's a 36.3% chance you'll be better off in the quarter final as well. After that, there's a 5.12% chance you'll be fine in the semi final as well and move on to the finals. (that's 2/39; a lopsided final will happen twice in 39 ladles if there are only 4 pro teams (and even less often with more pro teams)). There is a 0% chance you'll be fine in the finals, assuming total pro teams always defeat total noob teams in a match.)

With 1 seed: This is pretty much full randomization minus the bye feature. Exactly the same math as with 0 seeds. Yay!

With 2 seeds: There's a 25/91 (27.5%) chance you'll face a total pro team and lose in the first round.
=> A 72.5% chance you'll be fine!
(Just for fun: if you do face a noob team in the first round there's a 33% chance you'll be fine in the quarter final as well. Then, however, there's a 0% chance you'll be better off in the semi final, as both sides of the brackets have a total pro team. Again, 0% chance you'll be better off in the final.)

With 4 seeds: There's a 1/3 (33.3%) chance you'll face a total pro team and lose in the first round.
=> A 66.7% chance you'll be fine!
(Just for fun: if you do face a noob team in the first round and advance to the quarter final, your journey ends here: there's a 100% chance you'll meet a seeded total pro team now if you haven't already. Same with the semi final and the final.)

(Note: probability is probability, not necessarily reality)

pastebin with my calculations, if you wanna check for yourself.

Thanks to vov, suicidal, elmo and nanu who all helped a bit with the math. ^^