Ladle Fortress 2014 (Discussion)

[bilbo baggins]

How about a tourney where signed players would be randomized into randoms teams? Just a thought I had while reading this thread. Rookies with veterans, everyone having a fair chance to win a tourney

this is the FFA tourney without the randomization...

Alternatively, reduce tail length by a small degree. This not only allows for tails to leave the zone quicker, but makes a "hiding" def quicker to shrink or easier to cut, depending on the defender.

^this has been the best suggestion so far imo, it doesnt remove centering but makes it that little bit easier for the late centre to be blocked by the sweepers whilst as potter said changing the dynamics of attacking a tiny bit

[Titanoboa]

[...] those numbers don't make any sense. Let me go brush up on Bayes' theorem and see if I can calculate something more meaningful.

But they do make sense for that specific and simplified situation. If you can improve the numbers or make it more flexible, that's great!

What I wanted to show was that the difference between 0 seeds and 2 seeds when it comes to getting an unlucky draw, is not big at all. The main difference is that with 0 seeds there's a small (0 - 5%) chance of a lopsided final due to randomization, and with 2 seeds the 2 previous finalists will always be in either semi final (assuming they do show up and win previous matches)

Since we mentioned Ladle 34, which did have completely lopsided brackets: 1/20 (or 2/39) chance for that to happen according to my math. We started getting ~16 teams in Ladle 18 (15 teams. Ladle 17 had only 9 teams). The first seeded ladle was Ladle 38. So in ladles 18 to 37 we had 20 unseeded ladles with around 16 teams. The completely lopsided bracket happened once: 1/20 times.


Just to be super clear, and because it's fun, let's apply my math to Ladle 34 while following Team uNk.
The average team (back then) - Team uNk
The 4 pro teams (back then) - CT, ~*SP*~, Jalapeños, TX.
The 11 noob teams (back then) - uNa, Anesthetized, DS, CAT, EC, PRU, Open Team, ID, _~R~_, ~bye1~, ~bye2~
(since the premise is that noob teams never make upsets, the byes are equal to noob teams in this example. heh)

Opening Round:
1. Besides uNk there's 15 teams of which 11 are noob teams.
2. 11/15 = 0.733333333333 - this means there's a 73.3% chance Team uNk would face one of the noob teams in the Opening Round. Pretty much 3 out of 4 times.

Quarter Finals:
1. For uNk to face another noob team in the quarters, the opening match next to them must have been between 2 noob teams.
2. In addition to the 11/15 chance of uNk's first opponent being noobs, and since noob teams never beat pro teams, there's a 10/14 (14 teams left, 10 of them noobs) and 9/13 (since another noob team is gone, there's only 9 noob teams out of 13 total teams left) chance the other quarter finalist is a noob team as well.
3. (11/15)*(10/14)*(9/13) = 0.362637362637 - this means there's a 36.3% chance uNk would be better off in the Quarter Final as well. Pretty much 1 out of 3 times.

Semi Finals:
1. Same thing as the #1 above, except it covers uNk's entire half of the brackets. All 7 teams besides uNk must have been noob teams.
2. Same idea as with the #2 above, except it's longer.
3. (11/15)*(10/14)*(9/13)*(8/12)*(7/11)*(6/10)*(5/9) = 0.0512820512821 - there's a 5.12% chance uNk would be fine in the semi final and proceed to the finals.
4. 2/39 = 0.0512820512821 = 5.12% (actually 5.13%, oops!). So in 1 out of 20 ladles (since you can't rly say 19.5 ladles) there's going to be something like this if it's unseeded and there's around 16 teams. There were 20 unseeded ladles with around 16 teams, and it happened once.

Finals:
1. With all 4 of the "pro teams" on the other side of the brackets it's likely you're going to face the best of them in the finals. Good luck.

Cosidering all this discussion, yes, 2 seeds helps both arguments
Newbies teams get the chance to have a little better bracket than with 4 seeds but it guarantee they should face a hard enemy in semi-finals.

Orion was right on page 4. Well done.

The numbers pretty much make sense in the context that he puts them; there are a couple errors, though.

Any serious errors? Share it here if it's relevant to the thread or pm it if you feel like educating a math noob a little

[theo]

I would suggest just moving the spawns up a little bit and maybe lengthening the grid as well. Just 15 m.

Oh please no. It's already boring to go from def to attack (or the other way around) when you have no initial speed.

Alternatively, reduce tail length by a small degree. This not only allows for tails to leave the zone quicker, but makes a "hiding" def quicker to shrink or easier to cut, depending on the defender.

^this has been the best suggestion so far imo, it doesnt remove centering but makes it that little bit easier for the late centre to be blocked by the sweepers whilst as potter said changing the dynamics of attacking a tiny bit

Unlike Concord's idea to move the spawn spot out of the zone, you're still screwed if you got a dead tail. It's easy to double center that def afterwards.

But that's part of the game I guess.

[Concord]

15 m is 0.5 seconds bilbo

[bilbo baggins]

15 m is 0.5 seconds bilbo

theo said it not me but thx for clearing that up

[sinewav]

theo said it not me

Theo Baggins!

I've been trying to think about how to reduce the power of center attacks without major changes and I'm not sure it can be done. In this situation I am against reducing trail length or increasing acceleration (heh, I would rather see rubber reduced before those other things ). Changing those things would throw off how everyone handles their cycles. That would be chaos. But changing the map only changes tactics, and since centering is a tactic, it seems a map change would be best.

I disagree with Concord about a 15 meter extension. I think it should be somewhere around 25 +/-5. 15 doesn't seem significant enough when compared to the changes we made in holing, from 2 meters to 0.75m.

Is it possible to set up a Pickup server with a modified map to try this out over the next two weeks? If so, I'll draw up a couple maps and drop them here. I think we should at least play one and see how it feels.

[theo]

We should get rid of 2vs2 conq first IMHO.

[Soul]

We should get rid of 2vs2 conq first IMHO.

there is no 2v2 conq

[sinewav]

Seriously, what game is theo playing???????

[takburger]

Seriously, what game is theo playing???????

on pickups it is 2v2 conq.

[theo]

Seriously, what game is theo playing???????

You mean that multiplayer snake-like game?


But seriously, you were talking about experimenting ladle things in pickups. If we try this, we should make pickups game more ladle like.

[sinewav]

But seriously, you were talking about experimenting ladle things in pickups. If we try this, we should make pickups game more ladle like.

Actually, most people prefer for pickup to have different settings. However, it is a good place to experiment since public Fort is kind of dead. But you know what? I think I'll set up a Fortress test server in the next few days so we can try stuff out. I should have it up by Sunday. Pretty busy the next couple days.

[Titanoboa]

Why not, instead of expanding the map, move the spawns forward almost to the edge of the zone? It would change double grinding a bit, but how and how much? Let's try it?

[Concord]

Why not, instead of expanding the map, move the spawns forward almost to the edge of the zone? It would change double grinding a bit, but how and how much? Let's try it?

that's the whole reason the map would be expanded.

[Venijn]

I'd like to see a ladle with no brakes.

Or cycle_accel turn right up or slowed down. All three effect centering, but possibly at too great a cost to the game.

I now realise that added nothing to this conversation. \o/