Blitz Queue Trial (Closed)

[Katsuki]

Then design harder games for scum to win. Balance is fairly easy to solve as long as you recognize the limitations of town, which MS as a whole frequently forgets.

Considering how MS setups are continuing to skew towards townsided, would it be wise to suggest this harder games for scum?

As for Blitz games, towns in the past typically benefit from a fast pace for a variety of reasons. I'm curious if it will carry over to games specifically designed for a speed format.

[Katsuki]

I don't recall any research being done into setups, just town win rates (which I'm sure is rather low since the current meta favors scum heavily).

[Katsuki]

Setups are already relatively townsided in the games that I've seen at least. There are a variety of factors that contribute to a scum-friendly meta environment, which I believe should be partially alleviated by the environmental factors of a blitz game.

Hence I'd be curious to see first how blitz games play out.

[Katsuki]

Dr. Katz what do you think would be a better value to represent balance or lack thereof than winrates?

I'm not a huge proponent for theoretical WRs and "EV project" so to say because they remove the psychological real world effects of certain roles, but comparing EVs to actual WRs could be a start.

TY for asking good sir.

[Katsuki]

Setups are already relatively townsided in the games that I've seen at least. There are a variety of factors that contribute to a scum-friendly meta environment, which I believe should be partially alleviated by the environmental factors of a blitz game.

Hence I'd be curious to see first how blitz games play out.

You may be right that shorter games reduce bad tendencies in towns (though I'm not sure it'll have much of an effect either way), but the idea that a setup is townsided while leading to more scum wins over a long period of time seems wrongheaded.

Anyway, you're right. shorter games will be interesting. But we probably need current data to compare it to in terms of regular deadline games.

I should note that my experiences are more skewed to large theme games, but in the majority of games I played in, town had such atrocious dayplay with their desire to overdiscuss and drown the game thread in hundreds of pages worth of posts that no setup could possibly save them from the sheer amount of fluff they buried themselves in, providing an optimal environment for scum to play in. There is no reason for ever needing 100+ pages to get through a single day.

p-edit: I'm saying compare the EV of setups run to the actual WR outcomes would make for an interesting project and comparison. So say, if the collective EV of setups tested should yield a 55% town WR, but resulted in 60% scum WR instead, that'd be interesting to explore.

[Katsuki]

Right, that'd be interesting, but not really the point that's being made. The point is that we design setups (or should design setups) for the site as it exists, not as we think it should exist.

So if town is winning only 35% of games (or whatever) that's a sign that setups are SCUM sided. Sure, that may also mean that town are self-destructive and that's driving down win rates, but from a design perspective, our job isn't to expect town to suddenly start playing way better unless we have a compelling reason to think they'll do so.

I disagree wholeheartedly with that line of thinking. If you are catering setup designs to compensate for the poor play of a specific party then there is something wrong there. The mods job is to craft a balanced setup. If they want to control for player quality, they can do so during signups through vigorous screening, not in the setup.

[Katsuki]

If quality were a common commodity, then you would not have "HIGH QUALITY" as a unique marketable value.

p-edit: Balancing a setup around a game full of VIs is just as absurd. Balancing for random play as oppose to balancing based on skewing for poor town play is what I'm arguing for as the role of the mod.

[Katsuki]

Kats I'm still not sure what you think is a better option than literal actual winrates. You don't seem to like EVs, and with good reason I think.

There are many factors that play into actual WRs. Wasn't the goal of your original statement to me to examine if there was any truth to my argument?

[Katsuki]

Kats I'm still not sure what you think is a better option than literal actual winrates. You don't seem to like EVs, and with good reason I think.

There are many factors that play into actual WRs. Wasn't the goal of your original statement to me to examine if there was any truth to my argument?

To expand: factors can include

- Is the winrate being affected by setup balance?
- Is the winrate an outcome of play?

A simple experiment would be to see if there are discrepancies between expected winrates of setups, and actual winrates. If there isn't, then my statement about play is less likely to be correct in the context of affecting games over a larger sample size. If there is, then it'd be interesting to dive further into the factors of causation.

[Katsuki]

No, it was to prompt you to notice that there isn't a better alternative.

Oic.

There probably isn't, which is what I find unfortunate.

[Katsuki]

If quality were a common commodity, then you would not have "HIGH QUALITY" as a unique marketable value.

p-edit: Balancing a setup around a game full of VIs is just as absurd. Balancing for random play as oppose to balancing based on skewing for poor town play is what I'm arguing for as the role of the mod.

I'm

NOT

balancing around a game full of VIs unless you truly believe the site is all VIs now. I'm at least in theory trying to balance a game around the average player I can reasonably expect. Which is far superior to balancing around some sort of nonexistent megastar game list that always plays to their full potential at town (and not as scum).

Isn't balancing around "average competency" something that makes more sense than "average player you can reasonably expect"?

[Katsuki]

Say average competency on a sliding scale of 1-100 is 50.

Say average player you can reasonably expect has a competency of 35.

Do you balance for the 50 or the 35?

[Katsuki]

Vote: Zoraster's Backyard