Mini L4D Tourny

[Thorn]

[quote="Grapedrink";p="138869"]playing a single map would be a bad idea, I mean, the difference between an early tank and a late tank is huge, not to mention witch placement, blah blah blah, the concept of campaign is to balance that all out by being random over many levels[/quote]

whats the difference in playing 5 levels against 1 team versus playing 1 level against 5 different teams? its the same number of levels played, so the variability would be diminished equally. The only difference is you are playing more teams

[Grapedrink]

if you're trying to determine a championship and second place or whatever, a single bad map against the wrong team could ruin someone's aspirations, as opposed to playing 3ish maps would hopefully even it out

[Shifty]

Because of random events, no single stage is going to be the same. And sometimes, even the best coordination by a team cannot overcome some bad luck given to you by the director.

The last 3 levels of no mercy took about an hour. Add or subtract 15-30 minutes to that, and that's what we're looking at for a 3 level match. Atleast with 3 levels, it gives teams a chance to recoup mistakes in a previous level. Say you get jumped by a tank early and only get 5% distance. Your chances of winning the map is close to 0.

[Cool Guy]

If this goes down after Christmas then I can join in on the fun, but you dont have to push it back just for me

[MrBlah]

We do have multiple L4D servers available for use....could streamline the process.

[YevGenie]

I'll throw my hat int as a captain. Player if captain slots are unavailable.

[Shifty]

Looks like we have enough participants. I'm going to look at a calender and think about setting up a preliminary date, probably sometime in mid to late January.

[YevGenie]

Sounds good lets do it paws.

[fruitman]

One problem I see is that the game seems to randomly "balance" teams by swapping players from team to team. It happens in most of the VS games I play.

[Thorn]

[quote="Grapedrink";p="139301"]if you're trying to determine a championship and second place or whatever, a single bad map against the wrong team could ruin someone's aspirations, as opposed to playing 3ish maps would hopefully even it out[/quote]

Because of random events, no single stage is going to be the same. And sometimes, even the best coordination by a team cannot overcome some bad luck given to you by the director.

I see what you guys are saying, but I don't think you guys are seeing that the problems you are talking apply equally to both methods...

I am not saying we should play less maps, I am just saying we should spread out the maps we play against more teams instead of playing multiple maps against the same team. Having a bad random match in either situation would result in the same outcome, the only differences are that you get to play against more teams and everyone gets to play the same amount of matches, instead of the winners "moving up" while everyone else leaves.

It also makes calculating the winner a little more fun I think, since you don't really know for sure who won until the final match, unlike the brackets which slowly picks away at contestants

EDIT: I threw together a quick spreadsheet so you guys can see what I am talking about with some mock scores:



In this example 3 maps were played with 4 teams, each team played each map against every team and all scores were added up

[Shifty]

So Team 1 plays Team 2 on Map 1. Then Team 1 plays Team 3 on Map 2. Then Team 1 plays Team 4 on Map 3. Etc etc?

If so, thats not a bad way to go about it. It'd be fun to see face off against more villuns. I may still be missing your point, but what if Team 1 gets a tank against Team 2 on Map 1. That basically spells the end for Team 2 on that map, and they lose alot of points. It's not certain that Team 2 will get a tank at any other point during their matches. Whereas if they played a whole campaign (or multiple maps) against the same team theres more chance they'll get a tank because the director tends to even things up over a campaign. Starting a new match over and over again would limit the balance up effect.

[Thorn]

I was not aware that the director actively balances the game out over the course of the campaign, that doesn't seem right to me. I was under the impression that it balances out the individual matches, but that there is always a chance you could get unlucky, in which case just playing more rounds in general would counter that effect.

So Team 1 plays Team 2 on Map 1. Then Team 1 plays Team 3 on Map 2. Then Team 1 plays Team 4 on Map 3. Etc etc?

nah thats not what I meant, I was meaning that team 1 plays teams 2, 3, and 4 on maps 1, 2, and 3. Keeping track of how many points were earned during each map for both teams.


If the director does indeed change up during the course of the entire campaign, then the only way to counter that is to play more maps in succession against the same team. We should probably figure out for sure how the director works before deciding.

[Shifty]

[quote="Thorn";p="139620"]If the director does indeed change up during the course of the entire campaign, then the only way to counter that is to play more maps in succession against the same team. We should probably figure out for sure how the director works before deciding.[/quote]

I could be wrong of course, but several times there's been tanks on only one side on a particular level. Then the next level the other team might get a tank. Quite often the tanks do not even up in just one level.