Announcing: Card Hunter PvP Spring Season

What was the rational behind it because I didn't see it. You can't "game" the system if there is a set collection time any more than a random one. You still have to get 10 games per week and the only way to risk climbing is to risk losing. So maybe I'm missing something?

 

Your "I want to play but I don't want to lose rating" earlier is exactly why. I don't want people basing their decisions as to whether to queue or not on how close to the collection time we are. I figure by making the screenshot timing nebulous, people won't avoid queueing as much as otherwise; do people want to miss an entire day of ranked play? I'm taking a snapshot of the result of an entire week of play, not your last couple hours of play before the deadline, and a pretty obvious way to reach that is to ask you to be consistent, and not to play any differently on Monday than on Sunday or Saturday. Good luck!

(Also, people who are available to play right before a set collection time are advantaged over those who aren't.)

 

I'm not exactly sure on that rational. My "I want to play but I don't want to lose rating" is more psychological than actual factual. I'm going to have to play games to get rating. There isn't really a way to "change the way you play" significantly enough to "game" the system outside of normal.

I'd find it hard to believe that knowing when you collect data would give anyone a specific advantage or disadvantage as playing either way is both good and bad regardless of when you collect.

 

Week 3 standings are here!



And the OP has been updated to have the current overall stats as well.

 

Has gausse been playing? His history says he hasn't or something... http://cardhuntermeta.farbs.org/guildhistory.php?player=gausse

 

Bleh, slipped under my radar... hold please.

 

For players who are not in a guild ("Unaffiliated") Farbs' history shows only the matches against guild players. He may still have played 10 matches during the last week, they could've just happened to be against other unaffiliated players. His last match was 13 hours ago.

 

Indeed, but in this case I can confirm that I just messed up. Gausse has won 1 game this week (I toiled through the weekly wins chart) and has a current win streak of 6, meaning he didn't lose any games this week, much less the 9 he'd need to have lost in order to make 10 games played.

EDIT: Updated standings everywhere, hopefully all is ok now.

 

Clever way of checking it! I wonder whether it's bulletproof in all cases (or any other method allowed by the current public data). Doesn't Farbs store all matches? Maybe he could help you out with a special query provided only for you or something, save you all the manual checking effort.

 

Actually, I specifically remember you saying a few days ago that you were happy if you could keep where you were. So, the "I'm going to have to play games to get rating" is just a bluff. You don't need to play games to get more rating, you just want to keep your position. This could lead to a game of speculation where players just play 10 games a week and, if they are happy with their elo (and care about this season thing), they stop playing until Flax release the new standings. That is why you want him to say when he's collecting the data, so that you know when you can play again without the risk of losing elo just when Flax collects the data for the week. And I don't want to talk for Flax here, but I think he wanted to add an extra motivation for players to play more MP, while in fact this kind of behaviour do the opposite thing.
That is why, despite the fact that I don't care too much about the season standings (my main motivation for playing is that Card Hunter is a great game), I think Flaxative made a wise decision with his policy of not saying when he's collecting the data.

 

He does not store everything unfortunately.
I actually asked him about how easy it would be to do some operations on the data he stores, in preparation for running this season. Seems what he displays is what he has.

 

That's not really true at all. As it currently stands we know he is going to record the statistics once every 7 days, just not when on the 7th day (or 8th if it rolls over). Speculation games where you play just 10 games a week and stay happy with your standings has no real impact on overall ratings as they are averaged each week.

You still risk losing Elo no matter when he collects, even if you play right before he collects or right after you're still having to prepare for the next week. This only matters for the very last week when you are trying to get a certain standing.

 

Obviously is not the same to play right before or right after and you know it, otherwise your "I want to play but I don't want to lose rating" wouldn't have any sense, as well as the choice of playing casual games instead of ranked. As I explained before, if you choose to play just before the data is collected (and you don't know when that is), you are risking to have a bad streak (even losing 1 match makes a high ranked player drop a lot of points) when you were happy with your previous standing. On the other hand, if you play after the standing, there isn't such a risk, because even when you don't perform as you intended and you lose rating, you have all week to play and amend that, so eventually you will go up again (unless it's a terrible all-week streak, something highly improbable). So no, it's not the same (again, if you care about the season standings I mean).

 

"You have all week to fix it" but fix what? You could just lose more and more. If you look at it from a mathematical standpoint knowing when someone collects doesn't really change how someone should be playing because all end results are averaged. If I play "just one more" before the capture that could equate to even more points. There's no period (except the last) where it matters because it is a running total. You say having a large losing streak all week is highly improbable, but it is no more improbable than losing matches in any single instance.

 

I think running the promotion through to the end of June is a bit much. It's ok for the handful of people who can just play 10 games/week and sit on their rating, but for the rest of the population it's just a little exhausting. I don't know if this is an issue unique to myself, but I already stopped playing because of it. Blitzing games for a month could be fun. 3 months? That's just painful.

 

You are making my point. If it's probable to lose a match in any instance, and given that you were happy with your standing after playing 10 or more games during the week, you didn't want to take the risk to lose rating and your position, so you just play the waiting game till the next week standing is revealed. And I know that is an average, but that's what makes it worse. If the only thing that mattered would be the final positions, the week standings wouldn't care too much, they would just be an indicator of how players are doing. But as it's an average, every position at the end of the week counts, and that is when speculation comes into play.

Anyway, I didn't mean to make a personal attack here, I was just using your case as an example of why, in my opinion, Flaxative made the right choice of not saying when he's collecting the data. Nothing else.

 

Did you really stop playing because of the season?
That seems odd to me, because you can keep playing exactly how you were playing before the season started without being punished in any way, shape or form. You can literally play the game as you always have. I'm merely rewarding those who don't get tired, I suppose, or encouraging people not to tire. Feedback noted, of course, but it doesn't make sense to me that anyone should quit Card Hunter over this. Cheers!

 

I meant stopped participating in the season. But overall I would also play slightly less, because there's a promotion that others are taking part in that I don't feel part of - and that's less overall fun. I think a 1 month season would also encourage different winners.

 

I was a *tiny* bit miffed that free stuff is being handed out to the ratings grubbers, which meant an uptick in boring MP matches at mid-to-top tiers. But I'm playing less MP anyways these days, until there are new build archetypes to try out.

 

Same, missed first week caus I wasn't aware of the event, couldn't play second week caus too much work then I gave up caus feeling I was too late and actually couldn't play 20+ wins everyday for all last weeks.