Additional League Tests

I think you mean Wed 2 April for the PST and EST times?

 

There's a league going on right now. Come on in, the water's fine!

 

The league went into 20 min overtime even though there were no matches running. It should be omitted in this case.

Also, the total overtime time should be shortened to the maximum length left in the on-going match with the longest time left when the overtime period starts.

Also also, the overtime should finish immediately when all ongoing matches finish. Maybe it does already, couldn't verify that this time.

 

Great fun.

Having finished my league matches I'm currently sitting in the queue during overtime. Clicking on the league button to cancel queuing simply shows the dialogue about the league being in overtime, but does not take me out of the queue.

 

Great!

After the overtime was over, the League End banner came up and prizes were awarded, very nice cheering! It felt like a proper reward in itself, I felt really heroic .

 

How about using that cheering for when you down Blitzkenripper? Wouldn't fit Gary's world, though, come to think of it.

 

On the league rules page http://www.cardhunter.com/leagues/
the tiebreaker stuff is explained thusly:
"the game uses your total number of victory points scored in all games as a tiebreaker" and
"victory points scored in any subsequent games will count towards your tie-breaker score"

Playing in the league last night I noticed also losing extra matches after the mandatory four were played increased my tiebreaker score. Is this working as intended?

Also, please document the tiebreaker point calculation fully. When us players are paying to play in leagues, we want to know exactly how the points are calculated to maximize our chances of winning. Is the formula 7 tiebreaker points for a win and 3 points for a loss or something else? Are the points different for the mandatory matches and extra matches? Is the formula linear or a more complicated one? This cannot be left in doubt when entrance fees and prizes are on the line. Please publish the exact formula, no matter how complicated the math is. We can handle it but we must know it.

 

This is my understanding (and seems to match my actual results):

• Ranking is based on number of wins out of the first X games you played.
  
• If two pod members have the same number of wins, then it compares the total number of victory points they scored in all games they played in the league.
• Points from lost games count. (When I saw I couldn't win my 5th game, I recklessly charged in and killed his char for two points, then immediately resigned before he could get his 6th point from me.)
  
• Points do not convert to wins.

 

It seems that was too complicated for me to handle, after all . Victory points, yeah, I remember those now. They are the ones killing opponent characters and majority occupying the yellow victory locations get you. Boy, do I feel silly now for not getting that even though it's clearly spelled out and I even quoted the pertinent passages, for Pete's sake. Thanks for the clarification, Kalin! I was somehow thinking only about some nebulous "victory points" you get X amount of from winning a match and not the VPs we've known and loved since time immemorial. Especially immemorial to me, anyway...

 

That might be a bad system exactly because of behaviour like you demonstrated. Wouldn't an effective strategy after finishing the ranking matches (4 currently) be to play as many matches as you can within the time limit like this: throw everything into killing one opponent character/occupying a VP for the first round and immediately resign? Always get 1 or 2 points as fast as you can. (Of course, if you end up matched with someone from your own pod who ties with you, then you need to win, but this is unlikely). This would lead to a bad playing experience for everyone.

 

BM, what's the matchmaking system regarding playing with a same opponent in a league? Yesterday in the end there was only two of us left for about 20 minutes and we couldn't get a repeat match going (we had played one somewhat earlier). What's the minimum time between repeat matches in leagues? Maybe this needs to be relaxed to let those who want to play until the end get matches easier. Of course this depends on how populated the leagues end up being in the wild. Relaxation would make abuses easier so it's not uncomplicated.

 

Thinking about this some more, the safest strategy is probably rushing the VS on round one. And when playing the person you're tied with, you don't need to win, just resign when you're ahead on points. Of course, finding opponents at that stage is difficult, and anyone you do match against is probably using a similar strategy.

I think pods should be filled differently. Instead of adding players the moment they sign up, wait until the signup period ends then assign everyone randomly. And instead of telling a handful of players they can't play because their pod is incomplete, allow a handful of pods to be short one player. This will make it much harder to fill pods with alts or arrange for the entire pod to tie for first (I attempted both Tuesday night and failed (got 2nd and 4th place)).

 

The problem with that is that you then need to have a sign-up window open for a given amount of time during which no one can play. I think it's better to have pods firing constantly...

 

I think that's an improvement over having half the players finish their games and leave before the other half finish filling their pods.

 

I'm curious as to the overall intention of the tiebreaker system, specifically with the additional games. It's a unique system, but I'm not clear on what it achieves.

I'm working under the assumption that this is intended to allow people something to do if they get done with there games quickly. But is there anything else to it?