Re: The Rally Point (discussion, questions and some highbrow philosophising)
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 7:45 am
It is not going to be "large armies all round", but I do hope we can transition to a situation in Season 10 whereby players in all sections can have the option at the start of the season of choosing to play at either 1200 or 1600pts. There is not a massive difference between the two sizes of battle so it should not be a source of great controversy. The only issue is when two players in a match have indicated a preference for different size battles. So the "default setting" for the size of the battle in each section will decide which size battle will be used and the historical commonsense approach is probably to say that armies in Classical and Late Antiquity (an age of empires) tended to be larger than in the other periods, which were periods of greater political fragmentation. For example, Early Middle Ages tended to have smaller polities (and therefore smaller armies) in western Europe after the collapse of the western Roman empire.SLancaster wrote: ↑Fri Aug 21, 2020 2:14 am The Digital League is great. Tons of people playing. More came in the last season. All the suggestions in the last few weeks have been about really big changes not little tweaks. Everything from large armies all round, mirror matches, and another round of finals after 9 games! Now we come to the idea of random armies.
There is a significant proportion of players who enjoy mirror matches and we already use them in the Themed Event, so they are not a new introduction. The longer term plan is to continue to offer them in just one section of the tournament so players who do not like them will still be able to choose four other sections where you play just 9 matches against 9 different opponents. The balance will not be changing in the longer term in this regard.
There is not going to be another round of finals.
I am not sure what you mean by "random armies", but the Themed Event is on its last legs in its current format. What we did in the first few seasons of the FOG2DL, when we had very few DLC's, was to provide a set of nine different historical match-ups for people to play. It was very popular and the idea will be revived in one section each season, probably starting in Season 10.
The FOG2DL needs to keep evolving or we will start to lose players. The basic 10 player divisions, where you play 9 other opponents will remain the dominant characteristic of the tournament, but there will continue to be variations on that basic framework to cater for different player preferences.Honestly, can't we just leave the Digital League intact more or less as it is? Not everyone has time for extra games or playing with large armies, mirror matches and more turns. Surely, another tournament could include most if not all of these new ideas. Mirror match tournament. Tournament with large armies. Tournament like Chaos with purely random armies.
I like to pick my armies. Everyone likes to try out new armies and see how they go. You feel a sense of satisfaction from choosing an army and doing well with it. The random army idea especially has the potential to ruin everything. 9 games in every division with a random army picked for you?
I am all for thinking about improvements but a lot of this is almost like turning it into a different sort of tournament completely.