http://www.yesthetruthhurts.com/2010/03/state-of-game-socialized-competition.html
Go, read, enjoy. I think it's a great article. Very well researched, excellent use of links, and well written.
Oh, and I agree on salient points. In fairness, it kinda scratches my thoughts of publishing an article on how I feel Tournies should work...not least because I don't have the patience to type that much! lol
I'm hardly complaining though.
12 comments:
It is a good, thoughtful article. I enjoy it when Stelek put some time into documenting what he's thinking, rather than alluding to it in some of his comments.
So do I. I know I can often do it myself, and thus am not one to criticise - but it's very often frustrating.
Admittedly, I usually do get it, or at least, I think I do. lol
High quality article with reasoned, well thought out points that are fully explained and backed up. Awesome right there.
The best part, no drama started :D
It makes sense to me. If WAAC is going to produce a "winner", then drop all the soft scoring and adopt the proposed way of scoring the competition.
Messenger of Death observed that this system would mean that if you didn't go very well early on then you would effectively be out of the running. Whilst I understand what I beleive his point to be: potentially a better player may be eliminated by misfortune; nonetheless this is the nature of competition.
Agreed. I don't much like the idea of a good player meeting another good player and being out of the winners circle from the get go...but then if the person who beats them goes undefeated the other games, they earnt it. If they don't the first round loser is right back in it.
Speaking of players meeting up TKE, you mentioned that a flight to south UK is cheap - cheaper than my fuel. HOw much is a flight to east mids airport?
I wonder if you fancy going to Warhammer World and getting some games in? I wouldn't mind picking you up from east mids, shouldn't be a issue.
That'd be awesome, but:
I work weekends, and have already booked all my time off this year (until April 2011) :(
I need a passport sorted to fly, stupid anti-terror legislation. The form is here, and I HAVE started it...but procrastination is... :)
We certainly should sort something out for either the winter or next spring - but I need as few distractions from painting my Scythes as possible for the next 2 months, lol. :D
Overall, we agree on the goal of tournament play. Mechanically, we have some significant differences of opinon.
#1 Binary scoring is required for my swiss to be pure for 7 games and 128 players. Binary also reduces the granularity and generates "1 strike, and you're out" results, which I do not believe is desirable. My overall winner (and highest battle points total player) last year lost to his round 7 opponent on round 4, but came back with strong wins in rounds 5 and 6 to take the overall. Having primary/secondary/tertiary objectives means you have to play a broader and better game to win, as opposed to looking for the shortest path for your army to acheive 51% of the goals and win.
#2 Soft scores are not meaningless. Saying that painting is required is a form of soft scoring; I make it count a few points and have an entirely separate track for giving prizes to the prettiest and best converted army. But, if all other factors are equal, I think we would all rather have a pretty army win over a primer and 3 swipes army (both with the same battle points).
#3 Sportsmanship matters, and can't be left to the judges to make the initial assessment. The fact is that judges cannot be at every table for every minute of every round. Last year we had less than a dozen BAD game votes given, and several of those were overturned after review. And the judges were clear what tables were going generate bad game votes in most cases before the games ended - but not in all cases, which means we need the feedback from players. We had a lot more GREAT game votes; most players in the top 10 had several. The difference between 7 BAD games and 7 GREAT games is a significant number of points - however, no player recieved more than 4 BAD game votes, and that player was not in contention. Sportsmanship, if properly reviewed by the judges, allows bad player behavior to be more quickly and effectively policed, making the tournament run more smoothly and helps curtail all forms of player dishonesty.
Sorry for the Wall, so I'll stop talking for now.
Not a problem, helpful feedback always welcomed!
I disagree on the last, even though I see the impracticality. I think Judges constantly walking the floor is much more of a deterrent than anything currently in place, and from my experience with National level TCG finals, it's handy and reassuring to be able to call a judge and have him arrive very quickly, not to mention that you can do it more subtly than if they're across the hall chatting.
I think the Seattle thing - where everyone around the table could SEE the cheating, but the victim didn't speak out - I think that's exactly the kind of thing we want expunged from our game, and Always Watching, All The Time is a good, if not the best (IMO it is) way to achieve that.
Get is sorted then TKE!
I agree that judges circulating is a good thing. And unless every table has a judge hear and see everything, we will need the assistance of players to see that no one is behaving improperly.
And it is impractical to attempt to have a judge at every table. We have a lot of good 40K players locally, but even if I could get every one of them to give up their entire weekend to judge (as well as a good number of hours to get to 100% on the rules of every army and other obscure things, and some basic customer service training), I doubt anyone who would attend a tournament would want to pay for that level of observation. Not having the players score sportsmanship causes more inaccuracy and problems than having them score it causes.
But I feel like we're having a reality versus perfect world discussion. I believe that reality dictates the need for sportsmanship scoring, and can see how in a perfect world it would be unneccessary.
The thing in Seattle would have been caught if the player or a bystander had brought it to the attention of the judges. The judge may not have done anything without input from the player, though; mostly anything that can be construed as a grey area has to be left alone until the players speak out - it's generally accepted that letting the players play the game unless asked to intervene is the best course. I'm a little more aggressive than that, but there is really a limit to how intrusive judges can be and have the players consider it a good thing.
Personally, I think audiences should be allowed to speak out against such blatant cheating. I saw a game where a player claimed ALL his Lightning Claws had Rending, not just Shrike...I couldn't let it go, and intervened. I didn't get any thanks from either player, especially the cheater, but I can't abide people who would do things like that...it's not like he could have been mistaken on that. I should have called a judge, but they would have done nothing, because the BoW guy being cheated didn't speak out.
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