RAW lessened in twitch games (below 27s turns)

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dustin
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RAW lessened in twitch games (below 27s turns)

Post by dustin » Thu Sep 25, 2008 5:23 pm

Now in effect: games with short turn timers give out less RAW to the winners.

11s or less get knocked down the most.
27s or longer games have no RAW penalty.

If you want to play fast turn games while minimizing the RAW lessening, use a turn timer of 12, 17, 22, or 27 seconds. Those are the steps right before cutoff points.

Please let me know what you think.

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Post by soundboy » Thu Sep 25, 2008 6:48 pm

Westsidekilla6: at this (expletive) point dustin just shouldnt allow bio

Here's The Sound's take:
Bio should have the opportunity to count just as much as Classic, or any other game. I do think MOW should get a little more of a boost just because it's nice to create a stir with a new map, and I rarely see MOW full houses.
I gotta say, I think it's funny that most of the bio hosts set their rooms to the bare minimum in terms of turn time and continent bonuses so they could still get their super fast games in. It's not like they don't know the settings give them a one up. That's just a testament to the type of player. Any Rome, Deux, or Classic (etc.) player could do it too.
This new experiment does kill off twitch games in terms of RAW, however, whatever happened to playing unranked games just for fun.
The way I see it, if you're going to have a ranking system, everyone needs to start from the same level, regardless of what game they're playing. Nobody should have objections to that. And if Hosts and Players want to tinker with settings to give it a little variety, fair enough. Just don't expect it to help your RAW all that much. Your wins and losses are still affected, which seems to be a pretty good measuring stick in anyone's eyes.
If you're going to have a ranking system that encompasses all of the different games, you have to establish fair guidelines for all. Any other sort of tinkering is exhibition. It sucks that BIO gets targeted, but really, they were the only ones doing it consistently and reaping the benefits.
I applaud Dustin for trying to find better ways to level the playing field.

:smt020

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Post by Dangerous Beans » Thu Sep 25, 2008 7:31 pm

Methinks it should be under 24s instead of 27s, but amen otherwise.

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Post by *Manimal » Thu Sep 25, 2008 9:15 pm

Is this compiled onto the high percentage degradation?

I'm glad to see experimentation is taking place with the raw system, perhaps this combo will seem to balance things out!

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Post by Scad » Thu Sep 25, 2008 10:24 pm

Sounds great, dustin. At a glance, the two primary bio rooms (wizard of, will restart) are back to 40% and they have 25 and 29 second timers. Let's see if this even things out. I hope so; this seems to be the best system to me (except possibly for overall game length, but I respect you trying other options).

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Post by The Wontrob » Fri Sep 26, 2008 2:15 am

:smt023

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Post by 3DA » Fri Sep 26, 2008 2:29 am

soundboy wrote: It's not like they don't know the settings give them a one up.
:smt020
I do not think that any bio host has chosen their settings because it generates more general raw. Nobody is that into seeing all the Bio players at the top of the charts.

The reason that bio games got set at 40% was because that's the point at which the games stopped becoming marathons, which were boring for all involved. The reason the turn timer got turned down was because it made the game more exciting and challenging - like twitch.

Since this switch, I have seen more bio hosts tone down their settings, and the games are getting boring. They did not used to be.

I'm all for Lux being a place that feels democratic, and I, too, am glad that Dustin is responding to some feedback from the community - but now it feels a little like a witch hunt against bio.

I wonder what would happen if the Roman Empires map got even more popular than it is now? That map is fast; games on that map go faster than classic. i've noticed that people play RE for the same reason they play bio: the games are competitive, fast paced, and adrenaline packed. Would that map, too, get knocked down in raw when those players start to become fixtures in the top seeds?

I hope, also, that the raw LOSS has been tweaked in proportion to the raw GAIN. It would really not be fair to be able to lose 10% of your raw score for sixth place, and then only be able to gain 50 or 60 points back per game for every win. If I'm going to play bio during the chase, then I would like to know that the payoff is commensurate with the risk. It would not be fair to potentially be able to lose 120 points or more and then have it potentially take more than 2 wins to get back to where you started.

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Post by Big Will E Style » Fri Sep 26, 2008 3:08 am

I think the point system has gotten a little extreme.

Can you explain a little how it works.....

You can't win more than like 65 in a 40% game, but you can lose 90 for 4th place in a game with not that great RAW. I don't understand how you can lose so much when there is a such a cap on what you can win. Can we fix this discrepancy (sp).

I agree with the solution, I just think there are things needed to be fixed.

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Post by *Manimal » Fri Sep 26, 2008 8:19 am

3DA wrote: I do not think that any bio host has chosen their settings because it generates more general raw.

The reason that bio games got set at 40% was because that's the point at which the games stopped becoming marathons, which were boring for all involved. The reason the turn timer got turned down was because it made the game more exciting and challenging - like twitch.
With regards to the bolded statement, it's mostly true, but marathons in bio can certainly be avoided using different settings. However, the high % is part of what makes bio exciting to people.

With regards to the second statement, this just isn't true. The hosts didn't just randomly decide to play twitch games for the first time last Sunday because it made the game more exciting and challenging. If you honestly don't believe there was a correlation between general raw generation and the popularity of twitch last weekend, I would be surprised.

3DA, this is hardly a bio witch hunt, if you played high % short timer bio for the same amount of time as you played 0% 28s classic, you'd probably end up with similiar raw in the long run of a week.

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Post by djdee » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:00 am

There are indeed some sad raw obsessed bio players but twitch settings do not work as the room soon empties of players. 3DA is quite right in his assessment otherwise.

I am assuming these penalties are irrispective of the map and so will effect Roman empire just as much.

Nice to see God is at work. Thanks Dustin for listening.

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Post by Digital Jihad » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:03 am

This sucks. I don't care about raw and don't play on the weekends at all but when I do play I enjoy twitch and I enjoy high % bio the most because I like fast games. It seems like the goal here is to force everyone to play Classic who plays for raw (which is a lot of people) thereby making it hard to get a good game for folks like myself. Wouldn't it be better to make these changes only take effect on the weekend for raw chase the way Ranked only works on weekends? That way we can play our regular fun games during the week.

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Post by 3DA » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:10 am

Yes, I agree, Mani - the raw numbers from a week of Bio and a week of Classic would probably even out before this recent change. I don't think that's the case now.

It occurred to me, too, that while Bio was generating more raw, it was also taking away more raw. Each game, someone wins and someone loses. More games means more gain AND more loss.

Most people I've talked to play Bio because they find it more exciting than classic - not because it generates more raw. Compared to 40% bio on a 22 second clock, 0%, 30s classic seems to crawl. Most people playing in bio play it for the pace. If you don't take my word for it, pop into the rooms and ask: the players will tell you themselves.

It is true that on the occasional Sunday some hosts have thrown up twitch Bio games specifically to play more games and generate higher scores. This is morally a little sketchy. But it is categorically not true any other time than maybe two Sundays that I've been around. And, as far as I've noticed, the winners have always been essentially the same people - Cheech, Mani, Djdee, Para, Kitty, etc. - so I don't know that the twitch rooms have really had any kind of effect.

Here is the effect I've seen so far this week:

1. the amount of people playing Bio vs. Classic has not changed. It is still hard to find a full house classic game.

2. The raw scores of the people playing bio have been markedly chopped down. It used to be rare to see anyone playing with a score below 500: this week, in Bio, I've seen TONS of people below 500. Here's a typical example.
http://sillysoft.net/lux/rankings/game/716697

3. This creates a kind of raw sinkhole. The amount of raw lost in bio games is now far greater than the amount you can gain. More players have lower scores; thus, the whole group is brought down. You have to play - and WIN - 4 games to recover from one big loss. If your raw is 4 digits, this can be impossible, because winning sometimes does not net you any kind of decent gain. I've lost 26 for coming in third; Big Will lost 100 for coming in third; etc.

I'm not grousing, really; but the bottom line is that I would like to contend for a medal this week and I've been avoiding the game because I don't want my score to plummet EVEN IF I play well. Under the old rules, I would jump in frequently and take my lumps because I knew that I could get it back; now, I'm not so sure.

Again, I'm all for finding a way to level the playing field between the classic and bio camps. Please consider this some constructive criticism about the current changes in raw calculation. It seems to be having an adverse effect on bio games, and it is NOT driving classic traffic. I encourage Dustin to also reduce the amount of raw lost in games where the amount of raw gained is discounted; I think that will straighten it out.

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Post by Scad » Fri Sep 26, 2008 10:29 am

3DA wrote:It occurred to me, too, that while Bio was generating more raw, it was also taking away more raw. Each game, someone wins and someone loses. More games means more gain AND more loss.

It is true that on the occasional Sunday some hosts have thrown up twitch Bio games specifically to play more games and generate higher scores. This is morally a little sketchy.
John, these two statements are logically inconsistent. The reason Classic players opposed bio and supported this raw adjustment was that games are not currently (or were not) zero-sum in terms of raw. Playing more games and doing consistently okay in them would yield more raw than playing fewer games and doing very well. In your first statement you imply that bio is (was) zero-sum. If it were, your second statement cannot possibly be true: more twitch games wouldn't result in higher scores, just more games. And we've seen consistently that before the change, a pure Classicist couldn't compete with a pure Bio-Deuxist- the Classicist couldn't get enough games. The game time was a critical factor. Something had to be done.

Now, my question for dustin is this: is the raw change a proportional one, or a set reduction? If I play an 11 sec game, is the raw 60% of the original, or does it simply get chopped down by 30 points in all placings? If it's proportional, the losses should be reducing by a corresponding proportion as the wins; or, the cost to recover from a loss should be exactly the same as before. This would seem appropriate, as the original issue was making the two more comparable, rather than just knocking down short games. If it's a set reduction, this is a problem, because it would magnify losses while reducing winnings. If I didn't have a metric shit-ton of things to do today, I'd go play some bio (after all, I don't care where my raw goes) and try to figure this out.

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Post by 3DA » Fri Sep 26, 2008 12:27 pm

Fair enough. I'm tired and perhaps not making a lot of sense. :) But the results on the ground are clear: the raw sinkhole is real.

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