Suggested Rule change for cons

[Moonglow]

I'm always against conceding, even when its in my favor.  I feel a bit cheated when someone resigns.  I guess I  feel that there is usually always a chance.  I've written about it other posts so wont bang on about it too much again, but I feel that its more like the other person says I can't be bothered trying, sure I might be able to turn it around, but I'm having such a shit time playing with you I'd rather resign and walk away....

As for me resigning, I guess its a bit of the flip of that, but also Im usually still seeing (however faint) chances of turning it around, if only they don't notice x, or see y, I could do a, b or c... and own their ass!

[Zuberi]

My reference is applicable. I realize we have yet to figure out a great solution for breaking ties, but I believe we need a standard solution. Your answer seems to be "Just let the two sides figure it out for themselves." Imagining the result that answer would have on other tournaments, I believe does present a fair correlation to how it would affect Mage Wars tournaments. So again, could you imagine the arguments and the frustration that would result if the Ref of the Super Bowl game told the two teams "You two decide who wins this tie or you both lose."

Obviously I would say I win and you would say you win. I would favor whatever method puts me in the lead, and you would favor whatever method put you in the lead. Some really ridiculous methods could be proposed.

Your solution is not a solution. It is an attempt to side step the issue and it falls on its face. In the end we do need a standardized system of breaking ties. Even a poor one is better than none at all.

[Hedge]

They are too different, as there is over 100 people involved in playing the game, but Ill humor you. Right now the format for football is Sudden death equal possesion overtime. Most coaches would choose that Format anyways. The format I propose has worked for over 15 years in the second largest and longest Running  CCG game. If two people cannot decide on a winner of the match then both deserve a loss.


Who cares what method is used as long as the two agree on it? The method only matter to the two players as it should. Since a poor one is better than none At all, this one should suffice since you seem to think poorly of it.


Hedge

[Zuberi]

And I can not fathom it ever resulting in anything other than a loss for both players in that situation. If time ran out with them both still slugging away at each other, then obviously they both felt they had a chance to win. So why would either of them give that up?

And if that's the case, then why not cut out the arguments and frustration and simply state "If you're not finished when time runs out, it's a loss for both players."

My point was that they wouldn't agree on it. One would use the method that favored themselves, and the other would use a different method to favor themselves.

[Hedge]

And I can not fathom it ever resulting in anything other than a loss for both players in that situation. If time ran out with them both still slugging away at each other, then obviously they both felt they had a chance to win. So why would either of them give that up?

And if that's the case, then why not cut out the arguments and frustration and simply state "If you're not finished when time runs out, it's a loss for both players."

My point was that they wouldn't agree on it. One would use the method that favored themselves, and the other would use a different method to favor themselves.

Basically that is exactly what they are saying, However, the one that is losing has a chance to and should concede. there are double losses in l5r, but they are a rare occurance.


This tie break for MW would only be used during the Cut and Finals, because there has to be a winner. In the normal swiss rounds ties would be acceptable. the talk here is superfluous unless they fix the tournament system as a whole. I mean the format they used at Gencon Was terrible.


The way mage Wars Plays I cannot see a simple and quick tie break system that does not heavily favor one deck type or another.


Hedge

[Sailor Vulcan]

And I can not fathom it ever resulting in anything other than a loss for both players in that situation. If time ran out with them both still slugging away at each other, then obviously they both felt they had a chance to win. So why would either of them give that up?

And if that's the case, then why not cut out the arguments and frustration and simply state "If you're not finished when time runs out, it's a loss for both players."

My point was that they wouldn't agree on it. One would use the method that favored themselves, and the other would use a different method to favor themselves.

Basically that is exactly what they are saying, However, the one that is losing has a chance to and should concede. there are double losses in l5r, but they are a rare occurance.


This tie break for MW would only be used during the Cut and Finals, because there has to be a winner. In the normal swiss rounds ties would be acceptable. the talk here is superfluous unless they fix the tournament system as a whole. I mean the format they used at Gencon Was terrible.


The way mage Wars Plays I cannot see a simple and quick tie break system that does not heavily favor one deck type or another.


Hedge

I don't know, Kichard's  plan sounded pretty fair and reasonable. I think we should try it. Even if its not the perfect solution, we won't really know until we try it, since it's a new tiebreaker system that no one has used before. Besides, it's got to be better than "whoever did the most total damage so far wins" which does heavily favor aggressive playstyles.

Also, one could argue that you don't know who wins until the very last attack die has been rolled. While this is TECHNICALLY true, it isn't practically speaking. If you're a wizard with no armor, no defenses or guards, your nullify has been seeking dispelled, you've used your actions and you have 30 damage, and you're pushed through wall of thorns (10 dice) to a fully capable steel claw grizzly on the other side, what's the chances of surviving that AND managing to mount a successful comeback?

Theoretically your opponent could roll all 17 dice  without doing ANY damage. But the probability of that happening is SO small. Correct me if I calculated wrong, but I think it's about 7.7 x 10^-9. To survive the attacks at all, all but one die has to deal no damage and the die that does needs to deal less than 2 damage. The chances of this happening are about 1.5 x 10^-8.

To put that in perspective, both probabilities are more than twice as small as one in a million (1.0 x 10^-6). And if it was just the wall of thorns and no grizzly, the chances of surviving increase to about a whopping 3.4 x 10^-5. 10^-5 is one in a hundred thousand, so this probability is a LOT bigger than the other two, but it is still so infinitesimally small you might as well call it 0.

Even with such an insanely lucky roll you still have to turn things around and win. But no matter how much damage you still need to do to your opponent, they're out of LoS and the way to them is blocked by Wall of Thorns, and you still need to deal with the Grizzly first so that it doesn't successfully attack you again.

Now of course that over-the-top hypothetical situation might not be so likely in a tournament level game, but I think we all agree that there is usually a moment in the game where one player's chance of losing becomes pretty much 100%—a statistical point of no return. How much time elapses from that point to the actual end of the game can vary. However, when you've passed the statistical point of no return, there's really no reason to continue futilely struggling, especially if it would cause you to go over time.

After the statistical point of no return, you might be technically capable of turning the situation around, but it's not gonna happen. It's just not. And if Kichard's theory is accurate, then that statistical point of no return should consistently occur within three rounds after 5/6 of the total allotted game time has passed.

EDIT:
Of course, there are situations that actually do result in a draw. However, because of the way initiative works, the only ways (at least that I can think of) to have a draw in a game that doesn't require a tiebreaker is for both players to be afflicted with direct damage at the same time during the upkeep, or with a magebane activating from an attack spell.

Therefore, Kichard's idea could be used to determine real draws as well. In order to do this, rather than merely measuring how much damage each player deals in those three rounds, one should also take note of each player's potential next-upkeep damage.


For instance, consider the following end to
a set of tiebreaker rounds.

Player 1 is afflicted with a Ghoul-Rot and is standing in a poison fog cloud, and has dealt 5 damage, and player 2 is just afflicted with a ghoul rot and has dealt seven damage. Assuming both players have the mana to pay the upkeep costs, this game results in a draw.

For direct damage that isn't certain, such as burn conditions, you would have to roll for them at the end of the tiebreaker rounds.

Then again a mage might have Regrowth belt on. it's probably just better to do the next upkeep.

[Zuberi]

You say double losses would be rare, but you already have 3 people who have replied that they would not want to concede. I'm not familiar with l5r, and maybe it's clearer who is going to win in that game or maybe it is harder to turn the game around, but I'm with Moonglow on Mage Wars. There is always a chance I could turn things around. If I'm still playing when time is called, it is because I still see a chance of me pulling out a win.

This tie break for MW would only be used during the Cut and Finals, because there has to be a winner.

Since a poor one is better than none At all, this one should suffice since you seem to think poorly of it.

If there has to be a winner, then what happens when the players both refuse to concede? A poor tie breaker solution would be better than none at all so that a winner can be decided, but your method is not a solution at all as it allows for disagreement and argument. There needs to be a concise standardized method for breaking ties.

Right now the format for football is Sudden death equal possession overtime. Most coaches would choose that Format anyways.

I was under the impression that overtime wasn't an option. If the two mages had the option of simply continuing the game until there was a clear winner (i.e. a dead mage) then I agree with your sentiment. Most of them would choose that option. Right now the proposal that comes closest to Sudden Death Overtime is Ringkichard's idea of three tie breaker rounds.

[ringkichard]

The problem with the "expected concession" rule is that its not consistent, and this causes problems in all sorts of other ways.

1. Jerks like me who think it's a bad rule and refuse to concede. In the best case, they'd do like I would and at the start of the game say, "I'm not going to concede, and I don't want you to either. We are noble opponents with glorious vendetta and I will not accept your pity. Let them know us by our trail of skulls!" But I would get tired of saying that after six rounds and it might slip my mind and then my opponent might be in for an unpleasant surprise.

2. Legitimately drawn games. If I have 6 life left and you have 9, and we both have some creatures left and an unknown number of spells left, and maybe I've got a bit more equipment... we both get a loss for no good reason.

3. Entitlement. People would feel that they were owed concessions. After all, they conceded in a similar situaton just last week! They are likely to get very excited and accuse their oponents of having no honor. This starts fights.

4. Bullying. A big socially aggressive guy sits down and plays a kid who's smart but shy and new to the game. The game runs out of time because the kid is kinda slow and the big guy is kinda bad. The big guy's ego gets involved so he now bullies the kid into conceding because the draw, "Is your fault for taking so long."

5. Changing incentives. If I know that I don't have to win, I just have to be winning when the time runs out, I can play less agresively and face an easier task than being forced to commit and finish off an opponent. I can just avoid him or her and rely on social pressure to extract the concession.

6. Collusion. If I'm playing against my best friend in the semi-finals and we draw, I then have to chose between sending my friend to the finals against our hated enemy Chad vs. we both get nothing and that jerk gets the glory. Easy choice.

Now instead imagine that I'm playing Chad in the semi-finals but since we're playing Swiss pairings Chad was paired down against me; he's 4-0, I'm 3-1. My friend is also 3-1 and wins his game quickly. I now know that I can get my friend a higher tournament position than Chad just by drawing and giving us the double loss. It is not hard for me to deliberately play for a draw, just load up on armor and kite for 10 more rounds.

(Yes, in the second example I'm the scum of the earth. One purpose of rules is to constrain scum. In real life, if I noticed this situation I would be very annoyed that the rules were so sloppy that I had to give up a legal line of play that would benefit me because of a moral concern of mine external to the game.)

I hope I've made it clearer why I'd refuse to interact with this rule.

[Hedge]

you are not getting it. during swiss rounds ties are acceptable. In cut rounds they are not. In most of your example the situation would not arise or be moot, because it would not apply. But I will reply to each.


1. ties are acceptable in swiss rounds, you could also use this speech to decide on a tie break.
2. if this was during the cut you would discuss your strategy for the next few rounds and it is certain using the standard damage that you and Shadow talk about in your how to play posts that you can find out who is most likely to win. if you couldn't do that a judge would decide.
3. if during swiss you would tie, if during cut present your plans to the judge and he would decide.
4 if during swiss they would tie, neither would make the cut as the would have too many ties.
5. can and does happen with any tie break system, but much less often with this system.
6a Since you are playing against your friend, whom you have played countless time. you both are well aware of where the game is heading and what to expect from your opponent. It should be quite easy to tell who will win.
6b  In the cut records no longer matter as it is single elimination. if it is still in the swiss rounds you would get a tie. being that there has to be a winner the judge would decide If it was in the cut. Also YOu are speculating on the outcome of standing based on a single round. Yes it would stand to reason that Chad could be lower, but you do not know his, yours, or your friends strength of schedule. There are many factors that go into figuring that out. yes he might be paired down, but it would depend greatly on which round your friend has his loss whether he would over take Chad. After looking at it I don't think there is anyway that your friend would pass Chad in this instance. IF you want to discuss  6b Futher please post a seperate thread.

I don't think you are giving yourself and others enough credit. I played at gencon this year and I know some of the players for years from other games and some I had only met this year. Most of the players I interacted with would have had no problem with this rule once they had seen it in action. You can speculate all you want on how it will work out, But I have actually seen it working. Is it the best, no. the best system would be to play the game to the end, but the time is not there. Is it the best for the two players involved, yes it is. as they are the ones that decide thier fate, and can have no misgivings about the method used. Since it would only be used in the cut( Single elimination) and since there has to be a winner if the players can't agree then the judge will decide. Currently with the standard rule that is what is happening now only passively, not actively.


Hedge

[Zuberi]

Your last reply didn't really address Ringkichard's points, Hedge. All you said was "It doesn't matter in swiss rounds, but when it does matter a Judge can decide." If we allow in your system for having a Judge decide, I would personally want to know how the judge is basing his decision. I would again want a clear, concise, standardized system for determining the winner. Without that, it would simply be the judge's opinion of who he thinks would have come out on top. That doesn't seem fair to me at all.

Let us imagine a worst case scenario, shall we. Two players playing in the finals end with a legitimately tied game. After listening to their plans, the Judge decides to give the win to Player B. Obviously unhappy with that decision, Player A uses the race card and says that he lost because the Judge was racist and didn't like African Americans.

Not only does the Judge not have a way to defend himself against this accusation, BUT IT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE TRUE! It could very easily be the fact that the judge didn't like the way the losing player looked, or smelled, or acted. Something about him could have just gotten under the Judge's skin, and the only thing the Judge has to fall back on is "Well, I think he would have won" when there is ample chance that the other player could have won as well.

Now, if instead we have a clear system for how the judge would base his decision in place, then there would be no reason to have the concession rule in effect. The person who knows he would win by Judge's decision would never concede.

[Hedge]

Your last reply didn't really address Ringkichard's points, Hedge. All you said was "It doesn't matter in swiss rounds, but when it does matter a Judge can decide." If we allow in your system for having a Judge decide, I would personally want to know how the judge is basing his decision. I would again want a clear, concise, standardized system for determining the winner. Without that, it would simply be the judge's opinion of who he thinks would have come out on top. That doesn't seem fair to me at all.

Let us imagine a worst case scenario, shall we. Two players playing in the finals end with a legitimately tied game. After listening to their plans, the Judge decides to give the win to Player B. Obviously unhappy with that decision, Player A uses the race card and says that he lost because the Judge was racist and didn't like African Americans.

Not only does the Judge not have a way to defend himself against this accusation, BUT IT MIGHT ACTUALLY BE TRUE! It could very easily be the fact that the judge didn't like the way the losing player looked, or smelled, or acted. Something about him could have just gotten under the Judge's skin, and the only thing the Judge has to fall back on is "Well, I think he would have won" when there is ample chance that the other player could have won as well.

Now, if instead we have a clear system for how the judge would base his decision in place, then there would be no reason to have the concession rule in effect. The person who knows he would win by Judge's decision would never concede.

Ties in Swiss are fine, can we please stop discussing what happens during swiss rounds.

And that is the reason the two players would work toward an agreement because they do not know what the judge will take into consideration, they will decide what is fair on thier own. You guys are simply not understanding that it works. All your conjecture is unfounded. Based on Shadows reports from Gencon he would have only had to make a single descision on one game that weekend, and that is only if the two players could not decide it themselves. This is on his 87% of games finished on time.

If the judge cannot put aside personal issues they should not be a judge in the first place. Again this is only for conventions and a high level member of the rules team would be that judge in most if not all cases.


Then come up with a clear system that is simple, doesn't take more that 2 minutes to do, requires no algebraic functions or a calculator, and does not favor one deck type over another. On my next post I will post a full overview of the tournament format, I will not address any response of the things before this post. I don't think I have fully fleshed out the format. I see that outlining it from beging to end will help some of the parts that are missing or have not been questioned.

Thanks
Hedge

[Zuberi]

You've said a number of times that the system has been tried and tested and works, but I was failing to see how that could be based solely on your description. Thus, I looked up the tournament rules for L5R, known as their Floor Rules.

Although they do allow the players to concede as you have described, they also have an official tie breaking procedure for the elimination rounds, which you left out, called the Palmer Rule. First, they play best 2 out of 3 games. Then, if time runs out during the 2nd game, whoever won the first game is declared the overall winner. If time runs out during the 1st or the 3rd game, however, they....CONTINUE THE GAME! Their answer is to just go into overtime until one person actually loses.

This system I would be okay with in Mage Wars. If time runs out, just keep playing till one of you loses. However, I'm pretty sure that's already been established as not an option.

[Hedge]

The palmer rule can be used, but it is at the TO's descretion. The only round that it has to be used in is the final round. They have tournaments of 100's players at Gencon and regional kotei. With this many players they use the X-2 method for determining the cut/elimination rounds. They usually choose at some point to use the palmer rule but it usually top 8 at most, and once they use it the rule has to continue for the rest of the rounds of  cut. This was one of the things that I said had been left out. A tournament of that size and larger cuts to top 32 minimum so there will be at least two rounds that winners will have to be selected by some means between the two players or the both get a loss.


This will have to wait until tomorrow for me to continue stuff to do before getting ready for bed.

Hedge

[Zuberi]

I will grant you that your method is feasible, Hedge, since another game already uses that format. However, for the reasons outlined quite well by Ringkichard, and not properly addressed by either you or the material I have found on L5R, I am not a fan of the method. I would prefer the point system where wins are worth 3 points, ties are worth 1, and losses are worth 0. That is in regards to the Swiss Rounds. With either method, we still need a way to determine a winner during the elimination rounds and the Palmer Rule will not do, I'm afraid.

I have read back over the entire thread, and from all the suggestions thus far I believe some kind of derivation of Ringkichard's idea of "tie-breaker" rounds is the best.

[Shad0w]

The problem with the "expected concession" rule is that its not consistent, and this causes problems in all sorts of other ways.

1. Jerks like me who think it's a bad rule and refuse to concede. In the best case, they'd do like I would and at the start of the game say, "I'm not going to concede, and I don't want you to either. We are noble opponents with glorious vendetta and I will not accept your pity. Let them know us by our trail of skulls!" But I would get tired of saying that after six rounds and it might slip my mind and then my opponent might be in for an unpleasant surprise.

2. Legitimately drawn games. If I have 6 life left and you have 9, and we both have some creatures left and an unknown number of spells left, and maybe I've got a bit more equipment... we both get a loss for no good reason.

3. Entitlement. People would feel that they were owed concessions. After all, they conceded in a similar situaton just last week! They are likely to get very excited and accuse their oponents of having no honor. This starts fights.

4. Bullying. A big socially aggressive guy sits down and plays a kid who's smart but shy and new to the game. The game runs out of time because the kid is kinda slow and the big guy is kinda bad. The big guy's ego gets involved so he now bullies the kid into conceding because the draw, "Is your fault for taking so long."

5. Changing incentives. If I know that I don't have to win, I just have to be winning when the time runs out, I can play less agresively and face an easier task than being forced to commit and finish off an opponent. I can just avoid him or her and rely on social pressure to extract the concession.

6. Collusion. If I'm playing against my best friend in the semi-finals and we draw, I then have to chose between sending my friend to the finals against our hated enemy Chad vs. we both get nothing and that jerk gets the glory. Easy choice.

Now instead imagine that I'm playing Chad in the semi-finals but since we're playing Swiss pairings Chad was paired down against me; he's 4-0, I'm 3-1. My friend is also 3-1 and wins his game quickly. I now know that I can get my friend a higher tournament position than Chad just by drawing and giving us the double loss. It is not hard for me to deliberately play for a draw, just load up on armor and kite for 10 more rounds.

(Yes, in the second example I'm the scum of the earth. One purpose of rules is to constrain scum. In real life, if I noticed this situation I would be very annoyed that the rules were so sloppy that I had to give up a legal line of play that would benefit me because of a moral concern of mine external to the game.)

I hope I've made it clearer why I'd refuse to interact with this rule.

1:
I agree, unless you my friend or you are going to give me the win we both lose

2:
I agree, unless you my friend or you are going to give me the win we both lose

3:
Unless you my friend or you are going to give me the win we both lose. Please fight or this then you get a DQ and I get the win.

4:
Bullying. In my over 20 years of tourney games this does not happen much.

"Is your fault for taking so long."
This happens more than people like to admit some people are just slow. One of the people who used to play MTG at a shop I play at was 8th worst in the world. Each time she played we knew at least 70% the rounds were going to time. Playing against her is a pain.


5.
Changing incentives. This is just like playing to the draw in MTG. Lets look at the rule first.
117.       Determining a Match Winner In Swiss rounds, the player with the most game wins is the winner of the match. If both players have equal game wins, the match is a draw.

Now back to how playing to a draw works. I win game 1 in a best 2 out of 3 match. I now can win game 2 or draw game 2 and I win the match. In most cases it is easier to play to a draw result rather than try to win due to the fact I can use the clock to my advantage. If the other player does not kill me fast enough I win the match.
6. Collusion.
What is Collusion: Collusion is manipulating the course of an event by doing things like throwing games for a friend so that they will place better.  It can go hand in hand with bribery because usually there is some sort of monetary kick-back or reward for doing so.
 
 Bribery usually involves manipulating someone you don't know well by offering an incentive to concede to you or to not play for some reason. "I'll give you ten bucks if you let me win." Here is just a part of what WotC has to say about Collusion and the Appearance of Impropriety also take a look at this Collusion in Tournament Magic back from 2003. In many tourney formats it is very gray as to what is an is not allowed.