Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

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syllabear
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Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

Post by syllabear »

The Halley's comet of Armagetron.
ps I'm not tokoyami
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delinquent
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Re: Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

Post by delinquent »

syllabear
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Re: Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

Post by syllabear »

Gz Twixted arrows, something is going to have to be done about your dominance!

From the discord, Thump raised the question of a double elimination tournament. There was some good discussion about it and a few good suggestions by Durka that were quite well fleshed out:
Durka wrote:Idea for next Ladle: One giant player signup list. One hour before we auto generate random teams. Everyone has that hour to plan / practice / coordinate.
Idea for this Ladle: Guarantee 2 matchups for each team. R1: Random opponent. 2 matches. Then we use the results of that round to seed for the elimination round. With 6 teams, that would mean the top 2 teams get a bye, which seems fair. "Wait, but Durka, what if 3 teams all go 2-0?!" Yes yes, so in that case, you go by scoring margin. Idk.
I like the idea of a pickup-style fort tournament, but that is not ladle. It is something I will look into and will be in touch with potential team captains about.

The second idea, of a group stage type tournament prior to elimination is quite intriguing, particularly when we have <8 teams. It is something I would consider getting behind
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sinewav
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Re: Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

Post by sinewav »

Durka wrote:Idea for next Ladle: One giant player signup list. One hour before we auto generate random teams. Everyone has that hour to plan / practice / coordinate.
Why not go one step further and follow the early TRONIC model where everyone meets in IRC (Discord) an hour before to pick teams? It's less random. People don't like fully random teams for obvious reasons. We'll always have this kind of lopsided dominance unless we find the right balance between fully planned teams and full randomization. We already know both extremes give poor results. Here is an idea (stay with me on this, it's radical):

What if a Ladle team had no more than three (3) players at sign up and the rest came from a pool? Perhaps there could be one round of picking for the fourth (4) player and the remaining players (5 & 6) are randomized?

It's not a perfect solution, but it might be a step in the right direction. It still gives teams agency, but also leaves room for spoilers.

I think we should all do some research on different models that try to solve this problem. Surely in the world of competitive gaming there is a solution? People don't play enough to have a draft. The game doesn't collect stats like k/d (though that wouldn't be helpful anyway). There is probably an answer just under our noses, we just haven't seen it.

syllabear wrote: Sun Sep 06, 2020 11:19 pmI like the idea of a pickup-style fort tournament, but that is not ladle.
Ladle has gone through so many changes over the years it's hard to say what Ladle is other than "an organized Fortress tournament on the first Sunday of the month." Our flexibility is what's kept this tournament alive for so long, and our future success depends on maintaining that flexibility. :)
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delinquent
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Re: Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

Post by delinquent »

I like Sine's idea, actually, but I think it might be better suited to a tournament of it's own. Perhaps it could be held on the last Sunday of every month, and we could call it something like the Whisk.

Actually, now I really like that idea.
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Re: Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

Post by sinewav »

delinquent wrote: Mon Sep 07, 2020 11:55 am...I think it might be better suited to a tournament of it's own.
Ok, let's scrap the idea then. I would like to keep focused on improving Ladle, not another tournament we'll play once and forget about. This isn't the only idea I have though. I was thinking yesterday it's not impossible to create a player ranking system then use those ranks to make more fair teams. However, this takes some (or all) agency away from teams. I think I might make a separate thread for this idea because it could be used generically for all tournaments. But the question still remains, how do you allow self-organization but also keep gameplay balanced and fair?
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Re: Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

Post by aP|Nelg »

delinquent wrote: Mon Sep 07, 2020 11:55 amthe Whisk.
oi, that's clever!
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delinquent
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Re: Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

Post by delinquent »

sinewav wrote: Mon Sep 07, 2020 5:19 pm...not another tournament we'll play once and forget about...
I'm not sure we'd just forget about it, but perhaps it might be a good idea to put it on hold until we have a more stable and diverse player base. Maybe you should write a wiki page for it, that's what 2020 did for the Tronic <kitchen utensil> competitions right?
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Re: Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

Post by Goodygumdrops »

So from what I can tell, Twixted Arrows have won the last 4 ladles. According to my quick research on the wiki, it looks like this ties the longest streak in history (Rogue Tronners won ladles 91-94). It's kind of amazing to me that this level of dominance didn't occur ever in the early ladles, where usually there were at least two rival teams crushing the fields and trading victories back and forth.

Admittedly, my memories of those days are not perfect, but I don't recall many people saying "such and such teams are too dominant, so we need to change the format."

You want to end the current reign of dominance? Practice more. Get better. Recruit better players. Convince the elite unattached players to band together and kill you all.

Change the format? That's just wimping out.
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Re: Ladle 117 (6th September 2020)

Post by Monkey »

This new format that you guys are talking about has already been done...it was called "Fortress For All". I think Ratchet had something to do with it IIRC. Anyhow, you can just start it up again if people are interested.
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