Team System Discussion and Ideas

[bronislav84]

Relying on RNG entirely to pick teams? I'm never lucky, and may end up with people I don't know or don't care for. If we go with any draft, let's have an initial core team draft and then open recruitment as Harry described. I guess it's his idea now.

I'm still vehemently against drafts.

[Elysia]

Relying on RNG entirely to pick teams? I'm never lucky, and may end up with people I don't know or don't care for. If we go with any draft, let's have an initial core team draft and then open recruitment as Harry described. I guess it's his idea now.

I mean, the point of the RNG would be precisely to put you with teammates that you don't know--it would let people step out of their comfort zones a little and get to know some of the other fantastic members on PXR. New members? They're afraid to pick a team full of people they "don't know" as well--coming from experience, there's a list of teams here and I only know a handful of people. As a not-quite-newbie, I know that everyone here loves WAR, but how do I pick a team? If I get lucky, I'll meet new people. Maybe I won't. Suuuuuper scary, actually. I know you have your experience and desire to be with your friends, and so do a lot of people here, but there are a decent amount of people who aren't in the same boat. Also, meeting new friends.

Also, it's not like all of your friends will all be on different teams. There's a fair chance that you'll get a couple of people that you know really well, depending mostly on how many people you know. If you are friends with roughly 20% of the people participating in WAR, for example, then roughly 20% of your team would be your teammates anyway!

Point being, I think WAR is a place of competition as well as a place of friendship. A lot of the issues that are happening now are, I think, in part because some people feel excluded or isolated from other parts of the community (this is not to single anyone out; I think it goes both ways). However, if you only ever stick with the people you know, how can you ever make new friends? It's not like you can never talk to your other friends ever again because you were randomly rolled onto different teams for a summer.

My biggest fear with pick-based drafts is that there will be a ton of drama. As far as I understand (correct me if I'm wrong), the idea here is to have a few team leaders who would then take turns picking different members for their team? People say that this was disastrous when attempted before because lots of people got sad that they were picked late in the game/often friendships still get split onto different teams/seriously who wants to be that last kid picked on the kickball team. Again, not terribly familiar with the exact history here, but it sounded like people really just got sad and there was a lot more drama than necessary? This sounds weird, but removing the option of choice also removes the responsibility/blame that a team leader would otherwise have to carry during drafting--do you really want to have to prioritize (and publicly) which of your friends you would most want to have at your side?

[bronislav84]

And precisely why I wouldn't be for a system like that. I like being with people I know. How about making the RNG for only people who can't decide? Cause seriously though I see any form of draft or randomness as unfun.

[HKim]

I don't know. A random "draft" might be kind of fun and probably very balancing given a large enough participation size. Not only would it spread out the number of members, but more importantly, spread out the number of "active" members. As Kenny mentioned, it's these dedicated individuals who usually earn large numbers of points for their teams.

In fact, any balancing system, if done well, should probably take that into account. A team with 5 members who participate in the War like crazy each year will outperform a team with 10 members who participate only one or two weeks a year. I wonder if there is a good way to measure this "density" for each person.

Elysia's idea essentially says that measuring such "density" doesn't matter because it will be balanced naturally.

[Ash K.]

And precisely why I wouldn't be for a system like that. I like being with people I know. How about making the RNG for only people who can't decide? Cause seriously though I see any form of draft or randomness as unfun.

If you do that, you can still end up with uneven numbers though and arrive at a similar problem. Assume for a minute that the 20 people who joined Trainer all join Trainer still, a couple people join each of the other teams, and then the rest go into the draft pool. It can't fix the problem at hand.

However, I think this could work if we implement a soft cap to prevent that situation. Actually, HKim's post that ninja'd me there gives a good reason against even this unless the soft cap is very tight. Most likely, the two groups (choosing and entering draft) are not equal in terms of average activity during the WAR. I would expect most of the active veterans are in the former group and a lot of the people who are either barely active or may decide not to stick around after trying it for a while would be in the latter group. If a large group of active friends joins one team, it can ruin the natural fixing properties of the original proposal.

Also, if there is an old-school style draft implemented, I think drafting should be done privately and the order should not be announced to save any hurt feelings. That is, only the leaders who are part of the draft get to know when anyone was picked.

[Saraibre Ryu]

With regards to how some points an judging went on last year:

Some teams got all the points in a section because they were the only ones actively participating in a week, no so much that they dominated that particular section. Judges can make a call to withhold points from one week to the next if there is not enough diversity in the teams per challenge, though sometimes this leaves people feeling like their hard work for that week is being ignored. It's a toss up in some cases about what to do. I am not denying the fact that some teams were rather particular to a certain section. I can say that for Team Awesome last year and the ASB, the team didn't realize it until after the fact. None of that was intentional and was purely accidental. As last year's WAR RP judge, I did my best to give points even if people only posted once. It was a quality over quantity kind of scenario for lack of a better term.

[Also we are redoing what we're doing this year in ASB so it's a stupidly even playing field, even regular ASBer's will be on the same level as people who have never touched it.]

While drafting was a very opposed solution to team numbers for various reasons already talked about, I can understand people having the nagging loom of not having enough members to cover everything. Sometimes people win WAR's while only participating in one section, and it was also a joke team. [Octopus Babies anyone?]

I don't like the idea of limiting entrants completely, however I have an idea that may help everyone. Rather than balancing the amounts of entrants with a hard cap I would suggest something I call Difference Balancing.

Basically, if we have one person from each team enter the same weekly challenge, then more people from each team could join, as long as the difference between the highest team entries doesn't exceed a certain number. While I don't think this can work for RP, as RP works a bit differently from everything else, I can see it working for every other section.

So say that Drawn Art has a Difference Balance of 1. The number of entrants looks like this from each team:

1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1

The team that has two members entered in that event can't have any more member entrants until the majority/all of the other teams have two entrants as well. All the other teams can have room for another to enter, because the difference balance is 1, so there can only be a difference of one member in relation to other team entrants.

2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2

So with that, it can move on to this:

2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2

This would keep things remotely balanced without forcing people so much pick and choose. This would also help boost activity by others going "Hey you over in that Team, come play in this section!" After all this WAR is about fun, that was our primary focus. We weren't focusing so much on the competitive portion. Now some teams may not be participating in some sections at all in a week. If that's the case, a team can make it known in a particular section. This would also make team numbers not really matter anymore so much in the 'We're all gonna lose because Sarah laced her banners with addictive properties.' front.

Yes Sarah's substances in her graphics have been confiscated.

So, long story short: Difference Balancing
[In this case, the Difference Balance is 1]

1 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 GOOD
2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 AWESOME
2 | 2 | 3 | 3 | 2 GOOD
1 | 3 | 4 | 1 | 1 NOT GOOD
1 | 2 | 3 | 1 | 2 NOT GOOD

[Elysia]

I don't think that simply drafting the free agents would actually fix the problem expressed--that some teams are much larger than others--simply because there aren't enough free agents. There were only a handful this year (who posted in the thread, at least), and that wouldn't have evened out the teams numerically. I agree that punishing big teams or giving points to small teams are both non-ideal solutions to the number problem, and I think in the future an ideal solution would nip the number issue in the bud by having the teams on equal numerical footing from the start.

In terms of unfun-ness in drafting, I think this is an ideological difference. I'm personally thrilled by the idea of being able to meet new people in this community, although I can definitely see how better-established people wouldn't necessarily feel the same way because they already have tons of great friends. The important question, then, becomes the following: what is WAR really trying to accomplish? Is it to strengthen old friendships? To foster new ones? Something else altogether?

I feel like I've talked too long without widespread input, so I'll advance that question and then fall silent so others can speak. I think, though, that defining our goals for what WAR is as a whole greatly impact our choices in determining how to advance from here



Edit: wow I'm slow and you guys type fast. Reading and responding to the posts that aren't bronislav's

[Ash K.]

Slight problem with difference balancing:

Assume you have two members from Trainer and Phoenix Battalion, and three from Awesome and Prism. What happens when a Yoga Bear wants to enter?

[Saraibre Ryu]

Slight problem with difference balancing:

Assume you have two members from Trainer and Phoenix Battalion, and three from Awesome and Prism. What happens when a Yoga Bear wants to enter?

Basically the idea is to get at least one member from each team in a Weekly competition before number piled high. Other team's would not be able to get past 2 unless a team specifically stated that they had no one that wanted to participate in that week. So numbers wise, get at least one member from every team before getting oo many members of the same team in one section. If Awesome and Prism wanted to get past 2, another Team would have someone join in on the fun or they'd let that particular section know. If responses are delayed then the Judge of that section could allow more people to join, as a week may seem like awhile but time can fly super fast. This way people are invited into friendly competition with a 'hey we need more peeps, wanna join us for this week?' rather than being shut out, and it's a way that people can sort of 'manipulate' the cap so to speak. If the person who signs up is unable to do anything for that week for whatever reason, someone from that same team can take their spot if it ends up being 1 member from each team across the board for a particular section. The number doesn't have to be 1, it could be another number entirely.

As I said before, I don't think this would work great for the RP section, because that's run differently than other sections and is a bit weird. This is a rather beta suggestion that works with multiple ideas people had that can hopefully make everyone happy. I know ratios were a big concern. Keeping it friendly between teams is super important too!

[Pokemon Trainer Sarah]

That is a cool idea Sabi, but in reality it is probably rare that one event will get an entry from every single team, and even more rare that there will be 2! So I'd say most events would be stuck at 1 entry per team, max 2. It might work if the teams were more balanced in numbers already (so maybe if there is a draft/cap) but right now the larger teams would have most of their members not even being allowed to participate at all for the week and maybe the whole WAR, which isn't very fun for them. Plus again there's an issue of how to choose who gets to participate if more than x number want to. If it was something known from the beginning, it would probably encourage people to make/join small teams, which could be good.

Considering we actually do want as much participation as possible, it seems a bit counteractive to limit participation.

A random draft sounds pretty interesting... Probably not something that I would join in because I only really find fun being with my friends, but I guess it would deal with a lot of issues.

Since Elysia asked, I'd like to mention that the staff's motivation when discussing this WAR was purely to create an event with maximum participation and focus on fun and friends, not winning. We aimed to get new members involved, which is pretty much why Trainer and Prism were created. :) It seems it has turned into a bit more of a competitive thing than the just-for-fun game I hoped it to be, so we will have to take that into account for next year.