TheGrayMouser wrote: ↑Wed Aug 19, 2020 6:12 pm
Rather just play a series of games with the assumption that both sides are trying to win the battle at hand.
This is the crux of the issue. It is obvious that players are not in agreement here on this. When ties are allowed, it creates situations where metagaming can happen because you can play to deny something without having to play to win.
SLancaster wrote: ↑Thu Aug 20, 2020 12:36 am
TheGrayMouser wrote: ↑Wed Aug 19, 2020 9:41 pm
I assume your talking about professional teams here, where management is making the calls perhaps?...I would imagine when playing sports for fun ,( pre college, intramural etc) being told to throw a game would not sit well with the players. From Lanhkmar, USA.
No, not necessarily. Like an amateur football team playing away from home would often be very happy with a draw if playing one of the better sides in the league, for example. You just beat them at home.
I have followed American Football since I was a kid. I know you don't really get draws because you go into extra time. Almost every game will have a winner. Same with basketball or ice hockey as far as I know. This just doesn't happen in many sports in the UK/Europe. In cricket there are often draws. Rugby not so many but they can happen.
PS You are not throwing a game you are just drawing (taking one point) and staying unbeaten, especially away from home!
This is clearly a cultural thing. North American sports/competition/game design features lots of sudden death overtime or play until there is a winner regardless of how long it takes. Losers also typically get nothing while winners take everything. Professional Ice Hockey int he last decade introduced shootouts even during regular season play to ensure there is always a winner. Baseball teams play until there is a winner regardless of the number of innings though they just instituted starting a runner on 2nd base at the start of each overtime inning to try and resolve games quicker. Basketball has been winner or loser and the loser gets nothing since the game's inception. It is just you strange Euros that tolerate these "draws"
.
In addition, most North American sports there is also a litany of rules to punish defensive play or "run the clock" strategies. Ice Hockey has a delay of game penalties and icing rules. Basketball has 3 point lines, no goaltending, the restricted arc, and paint violations to curb excessive defensive play. The very structure of baseball makes it impossible to run the clock and there is no such thing as defensive play.
Now I see Pete has taken the opportunity to use a necro'd thread to demonstrate that he doesn't understand basic metagaming strategies.
stockwellpete wrote: ↑Wed Aug 19, 2020 7:47 pm
Sorry chaps, but my "piffle detector" has gone off.
-blah blah statistics-
So the idea that the points tariff in the FOG2DL leads to negative play, or that negative play is encouraged by the rules, is totally ridiculous.
It is a fact, attested to by DL players in writing in the rally thread, that several times, tournament circumstances dictate that they are required to attack at a significant disadvantage to try and scrape points when they would not have done so otherwise. It is also a fact that players have said that they will attack into defensive positions irregardless of the odds simply because they don't care. Quoting the number of draws is irrelevant because in most cases, one party of another inevitably caves and attacks. Also not all maps offer a camping position.
You may try to argue that the rules of the DL don't neccesarily encourage negative play but quoting draw statistics is not helping you here. You would have use another line of attack.
stockwellpete wrote: ↑Wed Aug 19, 2020 7:47 pm
And then we have these completely daft arguments . . .
"You can see in the Rally Point thread in the DL where it has gotten to the point where metagaming draws against good players is now accepted as a valid metagame strategy since there are no rules to prevent it and deny your opponent points by not playing the game. That is an insane concept to me as a competitive tournament in a game should be to try and determine who is the best player of the game, not who can sit there and figure out when it is beneficial to simply not play the game at all. The logical extreme of this metagame strategy would be to identify in a tournament the top contenders and have every other player actively collude to play uber defensively or hide in whatever terrain is available to minimize the chance of these players to get points and then play "regularly" among the rest of them" . . .
Who would even think of trying to do this? How many players would agree to it? None? One in a thousand? The whole thing is ridiculous.
A division A player is on record in the rally thread saying that they regret attacking into the castled position. The logical extreme is just that - an extreme - designed to show why certain argument or logical position is faulty because it can, *not necessarily will* lead to a certain outcome. Regardless of how many players would or would not do it since it would be collusion and unsportsmanlike, raising that point does not invalidate the logical thrust of the argument that your points system has that flaw in it.
stockwellpete wrote: ↑Wed Aug 19, 2020 7:47 pmAnd then we have this corker . . .
"edit: Not picking on Pete's tournament but I would just point out that in the DL, if you think you can't win against an opponent due to either a skill gap or a terrain disparity, the DL currently actively incentivizes you to find a way to draw the game. In both cases, you gain 0 points and you can deny your opponent the chance to earn any points. You essentially have a net loss of 0 against that player and can try to win a division off of the remaining games. The threshold for gaining the 3-1 split is high enough to discourage active play since that situation still puts you at a -2 point relative loss to that player nevermind the fact that if you just lose outright they get the 4 points and you get 0. So camping nets you the advantage of forcing the other player to come at you at a disadvantage so you can potentially net 4 points. If they don't engage, then you have lost nothing relative to that other player. Sure you can't do that in every game but as players in the Rally Thread have pointed out, strategically selecting when to do so seems to be perfectly valid."
Apart from the fact that drawing a match below the 25% threshold gets you zero points and has the same value as a loss as far as the other 8 players in the division are concerned, I have done a stat to show that players seeking to win a division outright have very little lee-way in terms of dropped points and that any strategy based on drawing 0-0 with the other contenders (sometimes just one other player, but often two or three other players) is almost always bound to fail.
-insert irrelevant chart-
Of course, the lower the points total required to win a division is, the more likely it is that 3 or 4 players will be in the hunt for promotion so a 0-0 draw strategy would be catastrophic. In 55% of divisions a player will need at least 28 points, meaning that they can afford to drop between 2 and 8 points across their 9 matches. A strategy based on getting a 0-0 draw with someone loses half of those 8 points straight away. In some divisions it would cost the player their promotion right away.
The flaw with your thinking is that your fail to recognize, even though I explicitly stated it in the quote, that drawing with an opponent also robs them of the 4 points and thus it leaves you in a better position than if you had fought a legitimate battle and lost.
Here is an example to illustrate. I have actually never beaten Ludendorf in any setting before. If I was a metagaming type of player and I was thrown into a division with a random assortment of Div A players like Snuggles, Nosyrat, and friends, I would definitely play defensive and camp and if Ludendorf offered a draw, I would happily take it since now
both of us are at the same -4 point deficit vis a vis the rest of the player pool. I'll then take my chances with the other 8 games to try and earn the 32 points still possible knowing that the maximum number of points he can earn is also 32. Doubly beneficial is that if there is another player who thinks that they can't beat Ludendorf as well, they might employ a similar strategy and thus potentially robbing him of another 4 potential points while they might fancy me as a target that can be taken down and thus I would be offered a fair game.
What I just demonstrated is that the EV of playing for a 0-0 draw is higher than the EV of playing him for real and losing. Ignoring this basic metagame strategy is like sitting at a poker table and knowingly getting involved in hands with players that you know are better than you rather than targetting the fish to steal all their money. Yes, if most of the division is better than you then you cannot employ this against multiple opponents and expect to win the division. Just like how you should get up from the poker table and find a seat somewhere else if there are more than one or two players better than you at a table. You also have to be able to internally gauge opposing player skill to a reasonably accurate degree to pull this off. And at some point you have play somebody and win to earn points somewhere but that is just common sense but again, it doesn't invalidate the basic premise.
In fact you have on record a player this season who had *nothing to play for* who specifically said they camped since they felt they had a weak army and would be slaughtered by a superior player playing a superior army and felt better with a 0-0 draw rather than losing. The fact that this option existed for him made him engage in defensive play. The better player caved, attacked anyways and got slaughtered in return. Basic EV being demonstrated right in front of you even though all he had to lose at that point was the mental dissatisfaction of getting bowled over by a better player.
Your own players are telling you that your system promotes negative play
stockwellpete wrote: ↑Wed Aug 19, 2020 7:47 pm
The only time where it might make sense to deliberately go for a 0-0 draw is right at the end of the season where such a result can definitely guarantee that a player will win promotion. And really, if they have already got themselves into such a strong position in the division, presumably by playing in an attacking manner and winning most of their other matches decisively, then they are quite entitled to play a defensive match in those circumstances.
Thank you for demonstrating yet another metagaming tactic which is unsavoury but also perfectly viable for exploitation in your system. If in the same hypothtical situation where it is Ludendorf, 7 division A players, and I in a competitive setting, I am incentivized to
delay my game against Ludendorf for as long as possible to see if pursuing a 0-0 draw/camping is a viable strategy for me. If I played out the rest of my games first before dealing with Ludendorf, I would know exactly where I stood and how to optimally craft my approach to our game and thus tune my strategy to create the best EV.
