Treeburst155

Ricochet, That's a good point. I have considered that drawback too. Meeting new PBEM opponents is part of the fun of tourneys IMO. IF it turns out to be a doable thing, we will have a vote on it. Treeburst155 out.

Wow, lots going on here, and I absolutely MUST get on with my testing of the playoff scenarios for the Nordic and Wannabee tourneys. 1)Wreck is right. I'm undecided about seeding. 2)There does seem to be quite a few players from the lower sections who enjoy playing the more experienced guys. This I admire. 3)The Wild Bill tourney was random. It was a success. Should we mess with success? 4)The playoffs WILL be run with the quality Boots & Tracks scenarios, and scored with the highly competitive modified Nabla system. Human designed scenarios are just more fun IMO, especially when played double blind. This issue is no longer open for debate. 5)The anonymous opponent idea was a 3AM idea, if you know what I mean. I was thinking a max of maybe 50 emails per day (48 players). That number would more likely be 200 since players will have five games going. This does not mean I wish to kill the idea now. It just means I will need to work on it a bit to see if it can be done. I have a couple volunteers to help. Perhaps it can be made to happen. We will revisit this issue. _______________________________________________ For now let's have an official vote on how sections will be assigned. We've had a good debate. The arguments have been presented. Here's the ballot: 1) Random section assignment picked from a hat. 2) Section assignment based on prior performance. 3) All sections seeded (even distribution) No previous posts to this thread will count as a vote. It's too much trouble to dig them up IMO. The polls will close at 2200 hrs (GMT-5) on April 30th. That gives one week for everybody to respond. The polls are now open to all who have signed up, even waiting list players. Now, I need a Floridian to take charge of the vote counting. Holien, where do you live? ________________________________________________ I vote #2, grouped by prior performance. Treeburst155 out.

Thanks, guys! Very entertaining. Fight On! Treeburst155 out.

I have an idea. It's a wild one. I would have to be very organized to pull it off, but I think I could do it. It's original and might be real fun. We will assign sections randomly out of a hat; BUT, all turn files will be sent to me. I will pass them to your opponents. Nobody will know who any of their opponents are until the end! Talk about some FOW, eh?! The playoff will be ran as normal with the modified Nabla scoring system and three new scenarios. This is the reward for winning your section. We will go from eight sections of six players to two sections of four players (three game round robin with modified Nabla scoring) to the final showdown for the wine. Each advancement would see virgin scenarios. There are some problems concerning the final showdown which I've already solved, but I'll explain all that later. So, you are randomly seeded and your opponents remain anonymous for the duration of the tourney. Hehehe....sounds like great fun to me. I would establish a file naming convention that must be followed so I know quickly and easily who to send the file to. A filename could be 27v18_32, for example. This means file 32 for the game between player #27 and player #18. The title of the email would be the same. Player 27's opponent, player #18, would name his reply file 18v27_33. The sender would always list his number first, followed by his opponents number and the file number. I consult my numbered list of players, complete with email address and out goes the move to it's final destination. The player would have to remember his player number, the player numbers of his opponents, and which password to associate with each player number. I would just right this down neatly on a notepad or something if I were playing. This is all off the top of my head. I can probably come up with something better for rapid identification of files after some thought. Maybe something more convenient for the players too. Anyway, what do you think about anonymous opponents? At the end, all would be revealed of course. Treeburst155 out.

Don't feel sorry for me, CapDog. I encouraged this debate. :eek: It's quite interesting, but it is now clear that no agreement can be reached concerning the seeding issue. The playoff structure is just a side issue to breed more contentious discussion. In the end I will do what I want simply for the reason you stated. I can't make everybody happy, so I'll make myself happy. I like to pontificate anyway. Let's talk about the problems in the Middle East...Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!! Treeburst155 out.

I think that's a fine idea for the playoffs, Mr Spkr. I would be more than happy to let you run it too. You see, my interest lies with the Nabla scoring system and the section play. I believe it is THAT good of a system for determining relative performance within a group, even with unbalanced scenarios. Unfortunately, due to the nature of PBEM (time), the group must be fairly small (6-8 players). My answer: eight tourneys (the sections) at once. Players could roll dice for the final prize as far as I'm concerned. If you win your section, you deserve a shot at the wine. The nature of that "shot" does not matter to me. It could be a raffle ticket. I'm just trying to accomodate as many people as possible. In order to do that, and still use the Nabla system, I have to have tourneys within the tourney. Ideally there would be eight prizes, but that will never happen unless players want to pay to play in order to provide all those prizes. Treeburst155 out.

MrSpkr, The dropout problem, though always with us, may not be as bad as you think. This group has already proved reliability for one thing. The Wild Bill tourney was a randomly seeded event, and it worked out alright. One reason is that these tourneys are run under complete FOW. Nobody know anything about how other players are doing. They only know about the games they themselves played. Having said that, I think you have presented the most convincing arguments on this topic thus far. BTW, AARs are not required. They just give your final tourney score a little boost that could come in handy in a tight race. They also need only be 5-6 decent paragraphs in length for full credit. Treeburst155 out.

Redeker, I can guarantee you the games will be kept down to five (not including the finals). M. Dorosh, We will get the scenarios before the community. Boots & Tracks will release them at their disgression AFTER we are finished with them. Treeburst155 out.

MrSpkr, Your single elimination playoff has one drawback, and only one, that I can think of. In fairness it would require balanced scenarios, which are virtually non-existent IMO. I would surely hear complaints of imbalance from some who lost, and they could possibly be right too. The best you can do is QB Meeting engagements where people get to choose their own forces (make their own mistakes). The maps would have to be rejectable several times too. Gameyness would rear it's ugly head. Been there, done that, and I have the permanent emotional scars to prove it. Treeburst155 out.

Well guess what Sir Uber General! You're number one on the list now. Treeburst155 out.

Jack Trap, I admire that attitude! That's the attitude I had counted on from the prospective section one players. More challenge at the cost of less likelihood of winning the section. Perhaps I should let players choose their section themselves. That would be quite interesting, eh? I have to get off the computer now. RL calls. I'll be monitoring the thread again in a few hours. Treeburst155 out.

It is obvious that those most opposed to being grouped by prior performance are those in the highest group. This is understandable because members of the high group will obviously have the toughest time moving on to the finals. Or, to put it another way, they will find it no easier to make it to the finals than somebody in the bottom group when it should be easier for them. Personally, the distinction of being placed in the highest group would appeal to me. I would consider it an honor of sorts, and be fine with the fact that my journey to the prize will be more difficult. I am, after all, in Section One. I can handle it. :cool: I would want to show my fellow Section Oners just who IS the top dog. I wouldn't worry about the prize until after I had proved my supremacy over the other hot shots. How could I do this if they could just say, "Well, your section was easier than mine." No, if I were a top dog I would WANT to play directly against the other supposed hot shots where the Nabla scoring system is at its best, in the sections. The playoffs and the prize will take care of themselves, or not. This is the ultimate in competitive spirit IMO. It's Double or Nothing. I want proven dominance over the top dogs AND the wine!! It has been argued that determination of skill for section assignment purposes is little more than an ill-informed judgement call, etc.. This may be true; but if it is, why all the uproar over being in the highest section? Perhaps the skill assessment is actually rather accurate, eh? Question for potential Section One players: Do you want the wine, or do you want the top dogs to bow down before you and acknowledge your PROVEN superiority on the field of battle? The latter can only happen if they play in your section. Treeburst155 out. [ April 22, 2002, 07:55 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

Holien say: "I am not a number." LOL!! Very good, Holien. Your points are also very good. It's tough to know which is the best way to do this. I'm enjoying this immensely. We will work something out. There's plenty of time. Treeburst155 out.

Nine scenarios is what we need as things stand now. More than that is really asking a lot from our unpaid designers. They aren't our personal scenario designers. They are donating their time to the community as a whole I think. The Nabla system was not designed for tourneys divided into sections, or tourneys requiring playoffs. It was designed to determine relative skill in the most accurate way possible among a given group of players. For the same reason, the round robin structure is desireable. I began dividing tourneys into sections simply because of the number of interested players, and an absolute necessity to keep the number of games participants must play to no greater than seven games. In effect, I was running several tourneys at once. The playoffs were merely an afterthought, and a way to determine who would get the prize. Not even WineCape, as generous as he is, wants to send 12 bottles of wine to 8 different people. Even if the merchandise is overflowing in his wine cellar the effort involved in shipping the goods worldwide, not to mention the cost of doing so is significant. Apparently he's had to re-ship the wines to more than one of the previous winners due to some sort of customs glitch. See how long it takes you to box up something delicate and then get it to UPS for shipment. Now do it eight times. See what I mean? There can only be one winner of the wine. So, when I opened up more sections (individual tourneys) I had to deal with how to decide which tourney winner got the prize. The REAL tourney is within the sections. The playoffs and the chance to win the wine are just the "prize" for winning your individual tourney. When it comes to prestige and recognition for outstanding performance in a highly competitive situation, the section one winner takes the honors in my book, whether he wins the wine or not. If you de-emphasize the prize and the playoffs and look at the sections, you will find them to be an excellent way to rate yourself among your peers. The section competition was carefully set up for this purpose. Treeburst155 out. [ April 22, 2002, 06:20 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

Ricochet, You are a borderline Uber Player based on your Wannabee performance. There are several in that borderline category. When I break it out into eight sections you borderline guys will probably fill most of a section IF we stay with the original plan. As you can see, the debate is raging. Treeburst155 out.

Mr Spkr's latest argument for keeping things as they are is VERY persuasive. I'm leaning back toward no seeding at all. The scoring system is very good for determining relative performance within a section. When you compare two players from different sections it isn't nearly so good because both played an entirely different set of opponents. Mr. Spkr has touched on this. Determining performance in the playoffs is also not very accurate due to the fact there will be no well established median for the scenarios being played. The playoff scoring system is quite different as a result. It's really a do or die thing. In order to make best use of the excellent Nabla scoring system players should be grouped according to apparent skill based on past performance. There will always be guesswork involved in this. For example, the worst tourney score in Section One may be fairly low. Does this mean that this player drops to the bottom section for the next tourney? Not to get sidetracked here, let's assume the players are fairly accurately grouped according to skill. What better way to find out who performs the best within that skill range than by having them fight amongst each other with the benefit of the superb scoring system. The section battles ARE the tourney this way. The rest, just a reward for winning. As for placement in future tourneys with two results for each player. Maybe the brilliant Nabla can come up with a way to weight the scores based on the section in which these scores were achieved. That's a new can of worms however. Treeburst155 out.

MrSpkr brings up a very real issue I hadn't considered. The round robin nature of the tourney, combined with the Nabla scoring system has one severe drawback, drop-outs. As many of you know this can be quite a problem in the later stages of the tourney. Replacements are not so thrilled about filling in when the situation is hopeless; and that is exactly when players disappear. I don't think anyone with a good game or two behind him has ever dropped out. I have recruited a couple replacements who did it soley as a favor to me to keep the tourney going. MickOZ and Kingfish come to mind here. I will have to consider this issue carefully. Treeburst155 out.

Cogust, That sounds like a very interesting tourney somebody dreamed up. My hearty Congrats to the guy who organized that one. Very interesting indeed. Holien, You should be proud to be an "Uber Player". Derogatory? Perhaps, but in a friendly way. It's a lot like being called a "grog" I think. It depends on who says it, and the context in which it is said. Because of this ambiguity I think I will refrain from the term from now on. Thanks for bringing this to my attention. I LOVE your idea of random seeding! This throws a roll of the dice into it and turns the simple placement of people into sections a fun event. The announcement of the sections and the subsequent complaining and joking on the thread would be fun for me. It's also somewhat of a compromise between the two other seeding options. Also, random seeding addresses Enoch's point about it being fun (and educational) to play players of more skill. I agree with him on this. I'm leaning towards random seeding now. Let me think about it. I want to see what others think about this seeding issue too. Treeburst155 out.

Redwolf, The scenarios will be as balanced as Boots & Tracks want them to be. SuperTed is aware that balance is not an important issue as long as the scenarios are fun for both sides. Keep in mind however that these will be "Official Boots & Tracks Scenarios", more than likely released to the full community. Balance is important for this reason. The stats from our tourney will help them determine balance before the scenarios are released to the general community. They can tweak them, based on our stats. My guess is that they will make an attempt to present us with balanced scenarios, but I don't think they will go to any great effort to determine balance since we will be doing that for them. SuperTed may correct me here. He knows what will be going on with scenario development. I'm only guessing. I'm of the opinion that virtually ALL scenarios are unbalanced to a certain degree, even when significant energy has been put into balance. Treeburst155 out.

Seeding Well, that sure is simple. Thanks, Cogust. I had considered arranging the sections just that way. It really depends on whether the emphasis of the tourney is to be on determining who really played the best, or on the fun factor. The scoring system is designed to determine performance, especially the way it is implemented in the "regular season". Players were put into sections with the "fun factor" as priority. The idea behind this is that, within each section, an accurate determination can be made as to who played the best. On top of that, the players will go into the tourney knowing their opponents are roughly of the same skill level. This creates hope (more fun) for the lesser players. They just might be able to win the section! The playoffs and the final showdown between the final two are just add on features of the tourney to determine who gets the fine wines. Here again there is hope for the lesser players. If they can win their section, and get a couple of upset victories against the uber players they can win the tourney! Of course, chances are the Section One winner will go all the way, but the hope is alive for the others. Dividing the sections as I have done, without seeding, is definitely not fair to the uber players when it comes to advancing to the finals. The worst uber player could probably win the lowest section with little trouble. If one looks at the section games as the real tourney, and the playoffs as simply an added attraction, this is OK. If the Uber players were equally divided among the sections they would eventually find themselves playing each other in the "post season" games anyway. I have simply made this happen right away where the best scoring system is in effect. The competition is within the sections. Think of each section as a complete tourney all by itself. The rest is just frosting on the cake for fun. Several players have commented on their placement. Some players in the uber section are not thrilled that they are placed there. The guys in the other sections are apparently quite happy with their placement. Nobody relishes playing the uber players, not even the other uber players. LOL! To repeat, the REAL tourney is within the sections where the excellent scoring system is in effect. There are actually going to be eight small tourneys taking place. If you win your section you won your tourney. The playoffs, and possibly the wine, are just the rewards for winning your tourney. Any arguments in favor of seeding I would love to hear. Try to convince me. I'm very interested. If you have a definite preference concerning the seeding of the sections please post your preference here. The tourney is for you. Your preferences carry weight. Majority opinion will be the determining factor. Treeburst155 out.

OK then, Combined Arms is now in the 48th slot with Uber General, Ari Maenpaa, and Tuomas on the waiting list, in that order. Let's hear it for CapitalistDogInChina who has sacrificed his tourney fun in order to help Boots & Tracks with the scenarios. You will be missed, CapDog. Your sacrifice is admirable. Treeburst155 out.

The waiting list: 1)Combined Arms 2)Uber General 3)Ari Maenpaa 4)Tuomas Do not be dismayed, guys. There will be an overflow tourney exactly like the main event, but with a different prize provided by me. You WILL play if you want to. ciks, Yes, chances are very good whoever wins Section One will go all the way, but not necessarily. By creating the sections based on past performance more players have a better chance of at least becoming a Section Winner. Also, I figured the Uber players would enjoy the huge challenge of playing other Uber players, even if it means a significantly reduced chance of actually winning the section. Having said that, I am very open to suggestions and willing to make any changes I feel will improve the tourney. I don't really understand how "seeding" works. If someone could explain it to me I might be willing to change things. Treeburst155 out.

Yes ciks, we will have a proper playoff as originally planned. Redwolf clearly had the best score in Section One. Nabla and I are testing the scenarios now. We want to get them right so it may be a week yet. Stay tuned to this thread or the Nordic Champ thread for updates, etc.. Treeburst155 out.

Why thank you, Mattias. I do it because I have the time, and because I enjoy spending that time on this great CM community. Nabla and his scoring system really stirred my enthusiasm for running tourneys. I'm of the mind there is no such thing as a balanced scenario. This was frustrating when it came to setting up competitions. Nabla's scoring system is an excellent way to deal with the issue. I've been a happy camper ever since. Treeburst155 out. [ April 23, 2002, 11:58 PM: Message edited by: Treeburst155 ]

Uber General, You just have the most rotten luck and timing. I really feel bad about it. Really I do. You are number two on the waiting list for the next tourney. Chances are very good that you will get in BEFORE it starts as it may be awhile and Real Life will no doubt force some to bow out. If your bad luck prevails, and you don't gain entrance to the main event, you will play in an exact duplicate overflow tourney, along with your fellow tourney vets who signed on too late. This overflow tourney will have a prize sponsored by me. So, even with the worst of luck, you will have a tourney with a nice prize to play in that will consist of RELIABLEparticipants. So hang in there, Sir Uber General. You'll have plenty of tourney games to play in the near future. Enjoy the short break. BTW, check the, "To All WineCape Tourney Vets" thread. That is where all the news for the upcoming tourney(s)will be posted, so check it frequently since you are now #2 on the waiting list. Treeburst155 out.