MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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Mar 17, 2025 - 13:20 |
 
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In order to make a TV gap draw less likely, you could try to activate teams ranging from 1000-1200 to 1400 (maybe at least 3 teams, one around 1000-1100, one around 1200, one around 1300). Not saying to implement it as a Box system, I mean doing it yourself.
I do that and I rarely get matched with teams higher than 1400 TV.
Since most teams are at low TV, chances are that one of your lower TV team will get matched with another low TV team.
The possibility of facing a monoactivated high TV still exists, but that could reduce the chance. |
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Sp00keh
Joined: Dec 06, 2011
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Mar 17, 2025 - 13:22 |
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Yea that's true, and worth bearing in mind
I find though, if I activate s2+ 1400k team and a s1 1000k team, it's almost always the s1 team that gets matched
Sometimes I don't mind which team I'm playing with, and I'll activate 3-4 teams
But sometimes I want games with a particular team that I'm trying to build, depends what mood I'm in. So that means to get games with that team, I'll have to deactivate the others |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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Mar 17, 2025 - 13:31 |
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Yes, not saying that multiactivation is the perfect, flawless solution to the TV gaps, but it's a little precaution that doesn't cost too much, unless you want to play just a team pursuing your specific agenda (building for a Major, or just liking that race etc.).
We are still in a transition phase and some teams are still mid-high or high TV.
I don't like big TV gaps in the Box either (in my humble opinion they should only belong to tournaments and private leagues) but the Box is not that bad right now.
In theory the developed players will be fired, eventually. |
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ArrestedDevelopment
Joined: Sep 14, 2015
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Mar 17, 2025 - 13:38 |
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| Sp00keh wrote: |
Actually - in fact it might help get games played. If people knew they wouldn't get a massive TV gap, they might be more inclined to play their s2+ teams |
A massive TV gap can be (and is for a lot of people, I agree) a negative game experience. However, the data has that Christer has always shown in the past that pretty much any TV gap is in favour of the larger team and you almost never sink below 40% to win, even at gaps of 1m+.
Smaller than 300tv TV gaps are largely not any easier for people to win and might well actually just be games where they face increased levels of guard and mighty blow which produces a negative experience and a wrecked team. Especially so if we create an environment where it's all bash in the mid-levels avoiding the teams who actually want to grow.
It's purely theoretical but the box tends towards bash like any other blind matchmaker and the current issue is thrown up by a few vampire teams - the last visible complaints about the s2 box previous to this were about norse and amazon teams with super carriers. Which is about as far in other direction as you can get.
I mean if we take your undead team would you really be happier playing vs 1450-1500tv Orcs with guard and mb all over the team (perhaps even at 10k in spots) with half or more of a season to rando roll DP on the linos? I know a lot of people wouldn't.
That's potentially what a TV-gap cap gets with the aforementioned 300-350 cap. And then all we really do is quibble about how the large the gap should be and how we next restrict the possible matches.
I'm not entirely blind to this and it is potentially a real problem when a game 2 team faces a game 8+ team imo, but that's not an issue a TV gap cap will solve and it's one that the wider site has already decided is too restrictive on matches to exclude from even s1 pairings. |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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Mar 17, 2025 - 13:45 |
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The TV gap can be balanced according to statistics, but the Box is a TVMM system and I expect a reasonable TV-matching from it.
It's not even a matter of balance or win rate, I just don't like to be paired with a potentially game breaking team, even if it happens once in a blue Moon.
If I were on GF I would not accept a TV gap match. I consider the Box a sort of "blind GF" where I have a certain control on the TV of my opponent teams.
Blind opponent and team are ok, but within a certain TV difference (namely 145 TV, in my ideal world), especially if I activated 6 teams and my opponent just 1 (thus increasing, with their choice, the TV gap chance).
If people want to build their super high TV team, they can do that on GF.
About the 350 TV gap cap: well, it's better to have a 350 TV gap cap than no TV cap at all. |
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ArrestedDevelopment
Joined: Sep 14, 2015
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Mar 17, 2025 - 14:10 |
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Well Matt I think everyone else is trying to discuss what is best for the site and division, even if in some cases bias creeps in as it is, quite humanly, perhaps difficult to propose what is holistically best for the collective if one has an individual stake in it.
But it's not really helpful to argue from the basis of a foregone conclusion. |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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Mar 17, 2025 - 14:26 |
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Sp00keh
Joined: Dec 06, 2011
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Mar 18, 2025 - 08:12 |
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| ArrestedDevelopment wrote: | | Sp00keh wrote: | | Actually - in fact it might help get games played. If people knew they wouldn't get a massive TV gap, they might be more inclined to play their s2+ teams |
if we take your undead team would you really be happier playing vs 1450-1500tv Orcs with guard and mb all over the team (perhaps even at 10k in spots) with half or more of a season to rando roll DP on the linos? I know a lot of people wouldn't. |
Happier compared to .. what? I don’t follow, or you’ve missed part of this out
The relevant comparison for TV cap is: would you be happier playing as 1135k undead against 1435k orcs, or 1935k orcs?
I’d play against the smaller orc team. The bigger team is likely to be a pointless game
That’s why I’d like a cap
| Quote: | | the data has that Christer has always shown in the past that pretty much any TV gap is in favour of the larger team and you almost never sink below 40% to win, even at gaps of 1m+. |
I think a lot of the data for the larger gap games in this ruleset is gonna include snotlings, or older underworld games, where they were pretty strong as underdog. And skilled coaches would deliberately enter tourneys and rumbles at very low TV. This is mostly gone now, but will still have skewed the data
Also megastars are now banned
For comparable matchup, eg elves vs elves or bash vs bash (basically, not snotlings) as underdog is disadvantaged, the wider the gap the worse it will get
So I agree w koadah, I think the perception is more important than the winrate%
We don’t know if a cap would increase or decrease the amount of games played
But it would decrease the games with huge gap that feel pointless |
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Rawlf
Joined: Jul 15, 2007
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Mar 18, 2025 - 10:11 |
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Hey Spookeh, commenting on two points because they stood out to me. Not a real reply to you, more the starting point for a general rant.
| Sp00keh wrote: |
The relevant comparison for TV cap is: would you be happier playing as 1135k undead against 1435k orcs, or 1935k orcs?
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This is not the relevant comparison. The relevant comparison is: would you like to play vs 1935k orcs or not at all.
Because if both your options exist, the smaller one gets picked for sure already.
| Sp00keh wrote: | | ...the games with huge gap that feel pointless |
This is something I think about a lot. Why are people so adamantly frozen in this mindset?
I looked through your games to see where you are coming from. Which games led to your opinion. All I found was 3 games with a noteable TV gap, all three Vampire mirrors where you hired the Count. You won 2 lost one. That cant be it? That seems to work even better than intended. Where do you get the idea from that tv gap games are pointless? Maybe you just need to try them out, and with an open mind instead of prejudice?
I am working on building an opinion that large tv gaps are actually very often very good for the underdog. Much better than small tv gaps for sure. Nothing is worse than a keg and two assistant coaches trying to offset 90k worth of block and guard.
Provided your team has its basics covered (enough rerolls, bit of bench, a ballcarrier maybe, depending on roster), being able to choose inducements knowing what your oppo looks like, and knowing your gameplan already, is often superior to what you get from generic teambuilding.
I just played my WEs 500k up. I got the twins and a wiz, the game was a lot of things but clearly not pointless. In the last major, I played up in tv vs Bazakastine, I got a wiz and Borak and found a bribe and it was a hell of a game. I saw tussock win the FC with Khemri, partly because he could induce big Stars being the underdog.
That is overlooked often, how you can break the mould of your roster through inducements. Playing with 4 ST5 as Pact is amazing. Not to mention getting a gutter runner as ball carrier as CD.
Inducements open new avenues to winning games that aren't even there in even TV matches.
Tl;dr coaches need to get their heads out of their 2010 prejudice and start exploring BB20.
While I am at it. Assuming even TV matches are THE way to play BB is nonsense to begin with. The only thing it has going for itself is that it is widely accepted among coaches, see above as to why.
The rules for progression BB were written for leagues, and in leagues, you dont have TV matchmaking. In leagues, playing with TV gaps is the norm. It is the norm that some rosters land in higher TV regions and others in lower TV, getting inducements on a regular basis. If anything, those are the kind of games that "BB is supposed to be played". Why people can stubbornly entertain the delusion that DE, Orcs, Humans, Goblins and whatnot are supposed to be played on even TV is beyond me. It very clearly does not come from BB game design. |
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Sp00keh
Joined: Dec 06, 2011
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Mar 18, 2025 - 11:07 |
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| Rawlf wrote: | | The relevant comparison is: would you like to play vs 1935k orcs or not at all. |
Hey 
Ok yea, good point. the counter might be then: Play vs 1935k orcs, or wait another 15 mins and try again
Those vamp mirrors would have been all in tournaments I think
I mostly play at fairly low/mid TV and haven't had blackbox games with massive TV diff myself
I am trying to not talk just from my perspective / about me / my teams, but in general terms.
Maybe mentioning my own teams was a bad idea, just wanted to give a concrete example of coming out of redraft at pretty low TV
I do think there's a general perception that games with a big tv gap can be pointless, daunting, difficult...
I am not sure it's to do with hangover mindset from previous rules
Inducements are good but they don't make up the full difference in TV strength
Keg and 2 coaches vs 90k of Block is a perfect example
I like star players, but only a few of the non-megastars are genuinely good, and you're not always gonna be at a level where they fit neatly, or provide what you need in that match
In league or tourney you can adjust TV to ensure you get good inducements ahead of the game, but not in box
I think a lot of teams develop in a similar way,
For bash teams it's a stat-up carrier and then as much Block Guard MB as you can
So the bigger team is just like yours but better, because it's further along that development track
Sure there can be plenty of entertaining games, and games where the underdog wins, but still, the overdog is generally stronger, I think especially when they're teams of a similar type (eg bash vs bash)
If I had to guess, prior to 2020 rules then inducements were worth maybe 50-60% of the TV
Now (without megastars) inducements are worth maybe 75-85% of the TV |
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koadah
Joined: Mar 30, 2005
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Mar 18, 2025 - 11:43 |
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| Rawlf wrote: | ...
This is not the relevant comparison. The relevant comparison is: would you like to play vs 1935k orcs or not at all. |
Yes. I think that some would choose not at all.
I suspect that Blood Bowl was not designed for Fumbbl [C]ompetitive division at all either.
people may find it a bit easier to suck it up if they'd both redrafted to a similar level and had played the same number of games as I'm assuning the rules were designed for.
People may think that a bigger bash team is likely to do more damage than a small bash team so that could be a factor if building towards a Major.
It is even worse now as you have a fixed number of games so a limited opportunity to recover from catastrophe.
And of course, people just might not fancy it. |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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Mar 18, 2025 - 11:44 |
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If the options were playing vs a super high TV with a big TV gap (higher than, say, 350) in the Box or waiting for the next draw, I'd rather wait for the next draw.
TV gap games are not necessarily losses, but they are not what, I think, many people want from TVMM (with the exception of teams deliberately exploiting TV gaps).
In tournaments and in private leagues yes, they can happen, but Box is not a private league. It's a TVMM system which should try to match teams by TV quite closely in my opinion.
A TV gap of 350 (if that were the TV gap cap in the Box) is anyway quite big already.
If people don't care about TV, why using the TV to match teams?
We could just play totally random match-ups in the Box.
Would that be popular? I don't think so. |
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ArrestedDevelopment
Joined: Sep 14, 2015
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Mar 18, 2025 - 13:08 |
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| Sp00keh wrote: |
Happier compared to .. what? I don’t follow, or you’ve missed part of this out
The relevant comparison for TV cap is: would you be happier playing as 1135k undead against 1435k orcs, or 1935k orcs?
I’d play against the smaller orc team. The bigger team is likely to be a pointless game
That’s why I’d like a cap
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The relevant alternative as Rawlf so happily provided is no game. And I am quite willing to bet that we would have the same threads complain about a max TV gap no matter what that cap was.
The point I have continually tried to illustrate is that even when we have a cap, the worst case scenario (which is what a massive gap already is in the current scheduler) is not going to be particularly great to people either.
People complained about 350tv gaps in crp. They complained about 300TV. As Matt has implied, anything over 150TV is already outside what he's happy with, I'm sure for others there's different cut-offs.
| Sp00keh wrote: | I think a lot of the data for the larger gap games in this ruleset is gonna include snotlings, or older underworld games, where they were pretty strong as underdog. And skilled coaches would deliberately enter tourneys and rumbles at very low TV.
This is mostly gone now, but will still have skewed the data
Also megastars are now banned
For comparable matchup, eg elves vs elves or bash vs bash (basically, not snotlings) as underdog is disadvantaged, the wider the gap the worse it will get
So I agree w koadah, I think the perception is more important than the winrate%
We don’t know if a cap would increase or decrease the amount of games played
But it would decrease the games with huge gap that feel pointless |
That 40%ish figure has held for several rulesets. It's not a complete anomaly, because it's partially recognising the fact we play a game with a not insignificant dose of rng beyond the influence of coaching ability. If we discount the wins where some great coach picked an inducement strat for a tournament, surely we then also have to discount all the losses where the worse coach also had the lower team and picked poorly?
Megastars are gone, but I had a look through the current list before I even entered this thread and came to the conclusion that there are several names on the current listing who could quite easily be dumped into megastars based on their statline and abilities.
It's good you reference snotlings here btw, because one of the first things I thought when Matt started saying a max gap of around 145tv was ideal to him was what would box look like if we enacted that? And the answer is that we would largely end up with stunties only ever playing stunties (we're probably not even that far off as it is). And that begins to become an issue in s2 if you enforce a 350tv cap because certain rosters (the aforemention snotlings, or even "competitively" redrafted flings) might struggle to get anywhere near within a legal range of any other roster after redrafting. At least it would be an issue until their coaches gave up or other coaches begun the downwards movement to both snack on stunties and avoid older, bigger teams at season start.
We've had a nice little go round of it from what I've seen on FUMBBL since 2020:
"stars were too good", now "without megastars not good "enough"
"seasons were too short", now "too long"
"maybe we don't need rookie protection" now "maybe we need a tv cap"
The list is very, very far from exhaustive and displays a recency bias, but is quite illustrative of how we are all sometimes guilty of lurches that while sometimes relevant, are also sometimes perhaps best not immediately acted upon. |
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ArrestedDevelopment
Joined: Sep 14, 2015
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Mar 18, 2025 - 13:37 |
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| MattDakka wrote: | If the options were playing vs a super high TV with a big TV gap (higher than, say, 350) in the Box or waiting for the next draw, I'd rather wait for the next draw.
TV gap games are not necessarily losses, but they are not what, I think, many people want from TVMM (with the exception of teams deliberately exploiting TV gaps).
In tournaments and in private leagues yes, they can happen, but Box is not a private league. It's a TVMM system which should try to match teams by TV quite closely in my opinion.
A TV gap of 350 (if that were the TV gap cap in the Box) is anyway quite big already.
If people don't care about TV, why using the TV to match teams?
We could just play totally random match-ups in the Box.
Would that be popular? I don't think so. |
I might feel aggrieved playing game 1 vs game 7, or game 2 vs game 8. Or game 6 vs game 12. I might not care a jot that the tv difference in all these games might be under 50tv, 100tv or under 150tv, the greater opportunity to stack skills is much more than whatever the value of the TV. A 10 or 20k Block is worth so much more when it sits on top of dodge and every extra game is another 16+ turns in which that could have been achieved. The same goes for mighty blow with block, frenzy or tackle, and guard with block, mighty blow, stand firm, or or sidestep.
It's worth even more when the opponent lacks a great many stacks (or even any skills at all) and yet the scheduler doesn't care about this, and largely from what this thread has shown, very few of you want to appreciate this.
Because enacting a 350tv cap would not stop game 1 s2 playing vs game 14 s2.
A large part of the feeling of helplessness that the match that provokes the thread invokes is due to the fact vampires can switch off your redrafted skills every turn. You might feel like you have a rookie team if it all works for them, and the gazes can feel unavoidable because they are now 2+ and the roster has high movement pieces as well. And if you put a cap in then outside tournament times the ideal way to get games is to stick mid-tv where a game 9+ vamp team can still draw a game 1-2 bash team. Just with less options for the bash team.
Is that game feeling any great deal better for you if the vamps don't have the big guy and the orcs get 150k less? Or how about no rookie blitzer and a rr less? Or maybe they'd drawn this team before their coach made some very recent additions? |
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MattDakka
Joined: Oct 09, 2007
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Mar 18, 2025 - 13:57 |
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| ArrestedDevelopment wrote: |
I might feel aggrieved playing game 1 vs game 7, or game 2 vs game 8. Or game 6 vs game 12. |
I agree, this is why I suggested to pair teams by brackets of games played (2 brackets half of the Season's length each). I didn't suggest to use only a TV gap cap.
| ArrestedDevelopment wrote: |
A 10 or 20k Block is worth so much more when it sits on top of dodge and every extra game is another 16+ turns in which that could have been achieved. The same goes for mighty blow with block, frenzy or tackle, and guard with block, mighty blow, stand firm, or or sidestep. |
And that's why I suggested to make the Season shorter, around 12-10 games. The shorter a Season is, the harder stacking skills gets (and, by the way, it reduces the TV gaps a bit as well). If a Season lasts 10 games, for example, the worst scenario is Season 2+ team with 0 games played vs a Season 2+ team with 9 games played. With the current 15-game Season, a Season 2+ team with 0 games played could face a Season 2+ team with 14 games played (a max game difference of 14 games instead of 9).
The same goes for reducing the Re-Draft budget from 1350 to 1300.
TV cap on its own is not going to fix the issues. |
Last edited by MattDakka on Mar 18, 2025; edited 1 time in total |
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