Slitherine

So, the tournament just ended, my first. And I am absolutely puzzled about how my opponent is allowed to stall the games without me getting points.

I am talking about the 3rd round. First it takes my opponent a couple of days to start the games. Ok, that's fine, one can not be available all the time. Then each day when I wake up I have a move for the 2 games, typically done a few hours before. So I (pretty much) instantly make my turns and hope to get turns back, but no, not until the next morning. So at the end we are around turn 10 or so out of 18.

So I expected to be compensated with points. I mean, I typically make my turns within a few hours, and it take my opponent about 18-20 hours to make his. But no, I end with 57 points, just like what I had before the tournament ended.

I am honestly very dissapointed with the whole format of the tournament. It seems clear that multiple things could be improved:

1: Point compensation for people who actually play their turn on time. It is not that hard. The round takes 14 days, so 336 hours or 20,160 minutes. In each game someone is always waiting, so divide the 20,160 minutes into 2 pools, one for each player, based on who is waiting. Then apply bonus points based on that.

2: The games do not give the same amount of points, typically. I know this is difficult, but honestly, by playing the 3rd game solo it was fairly clear to me it would give fewer points than the others. And if you can not find scenarios which give the same amount of points, then make sure the low point scenarios are first. You want to play the high point scenarios against people who are (theoretically) matched with you (or against people who are actually playing).

3: On the subject of point compensation, it seems to be too high for people whose opponent did not play at all. But again, this one is hard.

4: Consider a cup format with elimination (or an ongoing ladder). The problem I have is, in each round it does not matter whether I win or loose. All that matters is how many points I get. I find that to be somewhat dull. It is so much exiting if it actually matters in the individual game.

Sorry about this rant. I know I can be blunt : - ). But really, it has been an experience which was dull at times and frustrating at other times. I do not think I care for playing in this sort of tournament again. An ongoing ladder though.....

Hi,

This is all fair comment, and we're always iterating to try and improve this.

For point 1. You are unfortunate here in that 10 turns is what was set for the limit of points adjustment (a threshold through which we assume that people who've played that many turns have tried to play the game in good faith).

We are actually rolling out a new system for calculating point compensation which features an updated algorithm that I believe will allow us to set that threshold to the full scenario length and still produce "fair" results.

For Point 2. I would actually say that it was Round 2 that was the least likely to produce significant scores in this last tournament. The maths seem better, but it was much much harder to get a breakthrough to capture a HQ for a total victory. And it tends to be intangibles like that which produce the points variation as much as the iterative points from holding your own VP and chipping away at your opponent's forces.

However, I have set up the next tournament with your point about escalating scenarios in mind. Crescent Bay is the "fairest" of the three and showed the lowest chance of a breakout score in previous tournaments. This is then followed by Wake Island then Peninsula. This is last as it has the highest chance of a huge score if a defending player is able to routinely massacre and attacking player's landing forces due to poor amphibious operations. By putting it last, I'm hoping that the fairest ties will be played.

Point 3. I actually think that the Bye points in this round was too low. A bye should give a player enough points to still be in the hunt for a Top 3 finish. Other than Round 2 (which was v low scoring), I think a score of 200 would have been a better bye score. e.g. weizhinaihe played very well, but his 150 in Round 1 made it pretty impossible to hit the top of the table.

Point 4. These are just different types of tournament. I personally prefer these points types as it means that every action on every turn can count towards my final score. But I know that this is not an entirely shared opinion

Thanks for the reply, and thanks for being a good sport about my ranting. Some of your points are good, well they are all good, but some of them I disagree with.

I might consider a new tournament, but only if there is point compensation for any game not played to its completion (i.e. point 1). Before starting this tournament I was under the impression that this was already the case. Maybe my opponent played "in good faith", maybe it was lazyness, maybe my opponent just did not care. But no matter which one it is the end result is the same for me. To make it even worse I felt I was playing "the long game" (something I learned from watching my excellent opponent in round 2), and I felt that in at least one of the games in that final round my opponent was about to "break".
Oh well, it is only a game and all that. Annoying nonetheless.

The Winter Tournament that starts tomorrow has a Turn limit of 15 for all the scenarios, and that's the expectation of turns played with regards the score adjustment algorithm