plasmoid wrote:I suppose I should start by saying that what I'm doing is catering to those that do not think BB is like a crippled monkey. I believe I've seen you writing some pretty harsh words regarding BB as a game on the Cyanide forum recently. But I like it. So do others - (obviously). I completely agree that if someone were to redesign BB, NTBB wouldn't be the way to do it.
You (obviously) like the game so much that you have a long list of changes you've been proselytizing since Jesus stepped off the Mayflower? Can you explain the difference between that and redesigning in 200 words or less without ever using the terms "spirit" or "essence" while making vague hand gestures?
Blood Bowl is not balanced around anything serious, and we know that from every source of stats we've ever looked at. You end up with two rational options - you either say "eh, who cares?" and you just play it for kicks, or you say "we should aim for better balance" and actually do that. NTBB is neither of those - you've got no support for the idea that it provides better balance other than you kind'v feel like it does, and a vote at the local legion, after a few beers, said "could be!" according to 7/10 drunken veterans.. but you're not content to just play the game as is for kicks or there'd be no need to change anything at all. So... yeah, I don't know what the hell you're doing.
plasmoid wrote:Playtesting isn't hard science. It isn't just done with massive ammounts of data.
The few people I know who have been involved with playtesting projects have been asked for comments/feedback - and I don't think any board game company would do enough playtesting to get results that would be statistically significant.
Right, which is why you math it out at
design time so you don't need playtesting to determine if things are balanced - playtesting determines if people enjoy the game and can figure out how to play it, and maybe finds any major errors you made during design. Trying to balance things using playtesting data is insane. Consider the following two space programs:
1) Engineers use math and physics to design a rocket, run simulations, and then finally build a prototype and launch it.
2) Jeb and Zeke from the junkyard build rocket after rocket, seeing if this next one is the one that doesn't explode on the launchpad.
While I have no doubt there are plenty of people who take the second approach, they're basically throwing crap at the wall and seeing what sticks. In terms of game design, they're crap designers even if they eventually find something that works. They're an infinite number of toe-grafted crippled monkeys on and infinite number of typewriters hoping to eke out some Shakespeare.
plasmoid wrote:I also don't think you need to be able to isolate the effect of every single mechanic to gauge an effect as general as what I'm trying to do here.
No, but you need to be able to point to the effect of a mechanic to say you're justified in altering it, one would think, especially if you have a stated goal... which you do by the title of your project alone. You're making changes, but saying you don't need to show that those changes individually contribute to a specified goal... just that collectively they do. That boils down to saying, whenever anyone questions your logic "shh, just let daddy drive the bus" and if anyone asks how you came to the conclusion that it would move it in that direction saying "I used the force".
plasmoid wrote:Say you think Orcs are overpowered. You could take off a powerskill (block on their blitzers?) and stick on any infirior skill (sure hands). As long as you only push in one direction, and don't get caught up in balancing countermeasures, I believe you'll know the direction you pushed the team power in - though not the exact distance. Sure, sure hands isn't a bad skill to have sometimes, but going blockless and having sure hands redundancy would be a weakening of the team. I don't think that is controversial. And I think you have a lot of leeway for nerfing teams like orcs without risking suddenly and miraculously pushing them all the way through the bottom of tier 1.
This is how the game got to where it is already, plasmoid - using how you FEEL things are rather than using actual data. At the end of the day you're basically betting on having a stronger connection to The Force than, say Galak, since all of you are basing things on gut feeling and past experience as being the primary source of "data". What effect does block have on the w/l/d numbers for a roster? You FEEL it has a positive effect so you will compensate by replacing it with something you FEEL will have less positive effect. You don't think that's controversial and within a community that doesn't know any better it might not be... but its a bad way to go about designing and redesigning things.
As for the tiers.. well, they're mighty arbitrary. You do have a lot of room there... plus you can always subdivide them further to make it seem like you meant for things to be the way they turn out! If orcs end up being Tier 1.725 or Tier 0.934 then that's ok... design decision.
plasmoid wrote:So, what I'm trying to do is basic playtesting, with the aid of some statistics that can serve as a guideline, without ever being truly statistically significant.
Heh, you use the numbers as a vague guide for your specific gut feelings... Your method is the exact opposite of how things are supposed to go. That's why I may seem somewhat critical of the process.
plasmoid wrote:But in the vault process there were a lot of changes being made - way more than NTBB - and discussion had to be done on limited background. I believe we know a heck of a lot more about CRP by now. And NTBB does not start from scratch, but builds on the CRP rules. So I think we have better foundation on which to make decisions.
You may well have a future in politics.
plasmoid wrote:FOL sounds interesting. I don't know much about B, but I got the impression that developed teams could join B at a later point in their development. Is this right? (Honest question!)
I was under the impression it was the other way around - that people can join FOL with a team they've developed outside of it. At the end of the day it doesn't much matter - you're asking for very specific data, while stating, flat out, that you don't care what the data SAYS to begin with. Just use a Twister spinner and run from there - you're going to base your changes on your gut anyway, right?
plasmoid wrote:Ideally I'd love data on lots of games, where each team has played no more than, say, 10 games, and they aren't more than 5 games apart. I think that would reasonably mimic a starting league scenario. The reason I'm interested in these stats is that my tier0/überteam nerfs are based on the assumption that even though we have (vague) stats putting the überteams teams in tier1 over their lifetime, they seem to be starting stronger and finishing weaker - making them "above tier 1" at the start of their existence. That would be interesting to check.
MM data works just fine to show you that that is the case. Again, I point out that if your intention is to apply any sort of balance between rosters, you want them to always be playing at even TV so that you aren't confounded by the effects of inducements... and that's what you're going to end up with in MM scenarios. It also doesn't matter how many games the team has played - in fact, the more the better, as you're more likely to see what CAN be done with a roster rather than just what someone has managed to do with their current luck. To try to limit your data to scenarios in which less might have happened is to simply hope that randomness hides any effects that might not match what you're hoping to see.
Teams that have a crapton of games under their belt don't represent "skewed data", they represent what a team of their TV could be if they'd gotten the rolls they wanted, which is always a possibility. That's what you want to use as data, moreso than something that got crappy rolls and isn't living up to the roster's potential at that TV. That way you end up with a game in which one team isn't going to roll lucky and destroy the entire league as a result, solely because you refused to look at what could be and instead on what is simply more likely to be.
But I still think your method for deciding what changes to make is extremely sketchy.