Grumbledook wrote:Thats all well and good in a perfect world but whats to stop bad sports from voting everyone else down, or to stop tactical voting but anyone, like the situation at spikey where sportsmanship ended up not being counted at all.
Any sportmanship system that is factored into final results is prone to abuse/tactical voting. The simplest way around it is accountability, although this has several issues.
For the record at Spiky, sportmanship
was counted. 27 people got 10pts, 8 got 9pts and 3 got 8pts. One guy (who I've heard several people complain about) got 7. It cost him a position in the final table, as indeed it did for a few people who got 8 or 9.
Going back to the 'black mark' idea. (6 games) How about something like:
Ignore the first one (lessens effect of tactical voting/bad losing).
2 black marks: deduct 10% of final points tally.
3 black marks: deduct 25% of final points tally.
If you couple that with optional 'commendation' marks for games you really enjoy, you'll still get a nice guy/entertaining opponent award at the end of the tourney.
Of course you'd have to explictly state criteria for awarding a black mark in the rules pack (and for the record I wouldn't have handed out any in the 26 tourney games I've played in since (and inc.) Res.). That way people should have no complaints about overstepping whatever line the organisers choose to draw.
Ok, I'm not saying it's ideal or anything, I just feel that with the NAF rankings and burgeoning tourney scene, BB is
bound to get more competitive over time. I'd hate to see a hardcore harking back to 'the good old days' when tournies were played in a friendlier spirit, or worse still drifting away from the scene altogether because that spirit has diminished to a point they find unacceptable. Granted, that's a pretty bleak scenario, but it's not outside the realms of possibility. That whole possibility could be eradicated by a system that says:
'You will
not behave in a manner that pisses off a significant amount of your opponents without penalty.'