@dragonloup said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

i get what you are saying and it makes sense. I was just looking for the diversity angle. But yeah if the desire of the community is to get more races with higher tv , or to push the role play part of the game , i understand something need to be done to balance the system so there is more races to be more competitive at higher tv . Somehow i beleive you will find a huge resistance against the disappeareance of claw from the purist .

Now what would be the ideal solution in my "humble " opinion is to simply be able to disable EVERY SINGLE skills ( excepted the extraordinary ones or the loner) in the menu option so anyone wanting to create the custome leagues they want would be able to do so . That being said with such a poor chat system i see no futur for custom league .

In the meantime for COL the REZ mode seems to be the best compromise to get diversity ( speculating ) at higher tv. But does anyone gave any thought about my previous post regarding a custom REZ for COL, where any long term injury/death would be converted in Miss next game instead of just badly hurt ?

Well the purists can generaly go hang when it comes to balance decisions as they usualy play private leagues and dont really run in to the problem as everyone else does becuse they dont play enough to get anywhere. For them this is a tabletop with internet connection so they can play their 1 game a week and everything is fine and in a year or so they might actually break the 1600tv mark.

But yes it is a bit of a problem. In small private leagues claw can be a filler thing or a thing you put on a specific player to counter some team you face so no big game breaking deal really. But in open it is something you give everyone that can get it except the ballcarrier and that just wreck havoc.

Claw should just not have been brought in to the open leagues. Make it something you can use in private leagues but remove it from the Offical COL leagues. That way the purists can still play with their "totaly fine and no problem" Claw skill and the rest of us can actually start to have fun again.

The problem with the rez mode is that you dont gain any money in it. They really need to change that. SPP you get but it is not shown untill after the game. Me personaly is not a fan of rez league. I dont mind having players crippled and killed, what i mind is runing in to almost 100% CPOMB teams as soon as i hit 1700TV+ And a few games of that and you are so damaged that there is no point in even trying to "rebuild". You are just better of restarting the team. Sure it might happen without claw but with claw it is a 100% thing that will happen.

@supergnu said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

Well the purists can generaly go hang when it comes to balance decisions as they usualy play private leagues and dont really run in to the problem as everyone else does becuse they dont play enough to get anywhere. For them this is a tabletop with internet connection so they can play their 1 game a week and everything is fine and in a year or so they might actually break the 1600tv mark.

Nonsense. Scheduled leagues actually have a higher median and mean TV for their games than open leagues.

Claw should just not have been brought in to the open leagues. Make it something you can use in pårivate leagues but remove it from the Offical COL leagues. That way the purists can still play with their "totaly fine and no problem" Claw skill and the rest of us can actually start to have fun again.

Again, it's not even a problem in Open Leagues if the format is correctly made. And the fact is that the design intent was to increase attrition at high TV to prevent you getting to silly-high TV (2200+). That means increasing attrition for higher-AV teams in particular.

what i mind is runing in to almost 100% CPOMB teams as soon as i hit 1700TV+

You're overstating the issue, which doesn't help your case. COL has the "high TV packed with chaos" issue because concessions are the easy way to: a) prevent your team being killed and, b) develop your own team. As such people play not to win but to kill the other team. Whether it happens with Chaos now or Orcs/Dorfs with Guardspam in your Utopian clawless league matters not: people will still play that way because that's a sound strategy.
If you want a COL which works then Challenge is the way to do it. In challenge leagues you get fewer kill teams because kill teams can't get a match so easily - it's self-policing. People will talk about cherrypicking and all sorts, but the fact is that such leagues are more popular than MM leagues, and where concessions are allowed (i.e. BB1) matches made through challenges result in far fewer concessions than matches made by MM.

I expressed an opinion that something needs to be done to make a resurrection Cabalvision leauge with spp and money gain. I expressed an opinion to add a skill to nullify claw. I have no stats to show, and I dont need any. This is my opinion, and I also think many wants the same as me.

And, then you have a random game "expert" (Blood bowl) with low skills in strategy games. I understand that since you don't come up with any achievements to show that you actually are worth discussing with. A random loser.

A internet-troll that starts to argue about my opinions. You are nothing! You are a little average bob. Stop pretending that watching Blood bowl stats makes you a big guy. You are not, wtf man!

And you just made up a sentence I did not write, wtf who are you??

@supergnu said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

Just ask Dode about CPOMB and Chaos domination and he would (atleast in the past) bring up the Chaos sub 50% WR as a counter argument without understanding that a newly created team dont have CPOMB.

What makes you think I don't understand that? Are you under the impression CPOMB (and particularly claw) isn't intended to increase attrition rates at high TV, thereby preventing the higher-AV teams from continually increasing in TV? Or don't you realise that the ONLY balance criteria BB uses is lifetime win rates? Or do you perhaps not know that even at high TV the win rates of chaos teams are actually not the highest at all?

@drblitz said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

I expressed an opinion that something needs to be done to make a resurrection Cabalvision leauge with spp and money gain. I expressed an opinion to add a skill to nullify claw. I have no stats to show, and I dont need any. This is my opinion, and I also think many wants the same as me.

No, you don't need data to express an opinion. It's damned helpful if you want to convince anyone your opinion is correct, though. Why should I take your opinion on BB?

@dode74 ok for the challenge/cherry picking mode . I used it and abused it bb1 it was fun. But your are bringing back farming on large scale. I can say for a fact that your datas are not reliable on that matter (unless you trim the cheaters from it) . People had 2 accounts, run the game in parrallal and built custom team. Or play with their buddy to just score or pass till they get the skill set they want. So of course they are not going to concede and loose mvp. If you can filter the cheaters on your meta then i ll take your point otherwise i am dubious about the challenge mode as the way forward. Anyway if it helps improving the chat system i would support it even if don t beleive in it. It would still be a nice addition for people who have limited time

@dode74 said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

@supergnu said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

Well the purists can generaly go hang when it comes to balance decisions as they usualy play private leagues and dont really run in to the problem as everyone else does becuse they dont play enough to get anywhere. For them this is a tabletop with internet connection so they can play their 1 game a week and everything is fine and in a year or so they might actually break the 1600tv mark.

Nonsense. Scheduled leagues actually have a higher median and mean TV for their games than open leagues.

Claw should just not have been brought in to the open leagues. Make it something you can use in pårivate leagues but remove it from the Offical COL leagues. That way the purists can still play with their "totaly fine and no problem" Claw skill and the rest of us can actually start to have fun again.

Again, it's not even a problem in Open Leagues if the format is correctly made. And the fact is that the design intent was to increase attrition at high TV to prevent you getting to silly-high TV (2200+). That means increasing attrition for higher-AV teams in particular.

what i mind is runing in to almost 100% CPOMB teams as soon as i hit 1700TV+

You're overstating the issue, which doesn't help your case. COL has the "high TV packed with chaos" issue because concessions are the easy way to: a) prevent your team being killed and, b) develop your own team. As such people play not to win but to kill the other team. Whether it happens with Chaos now or Orcs/Dorfs with Guardspam in your Utopian clawless league matters not: people will still play that way because that's a sound strategy.
If you want a COL which works then Challenge is the way to do it. In challenge leagues you get fewer kill teams because kill teams can't get a match so easily - it's self-policing. People will talk about cherrypicking and all sorts, but the fact is that such leagues are more popular than MM leagues, and where concessions are allowed (i.e. BB1) matches made through challenges result in far fewer concessions than matches made by MM.

1. If that is the case, why do you think that is?

2. Not a problem? Silly high? 2200 you get from casualy playing normaly and you still will have a team that is lacking a lot of skills. However most people will never get herebecuse their team will die before they hit 2.2k mark. Where is the attrition for the chaos teams? Oh yea there are none becuse they never fight eachother becuse they dont want their killers to be killed. The format is not correctly made.

3. You should actually play some games in the official COL league at 1700+ TV. COL have the issue with chaos becuse they have CPOMB. Simple as that. All of their characters can easily get CPOMB and they dont sacrifice anything for it. They are fast, they are averagly agile, they have average armor and they have access to CPOMB on normal rolls on every single player if they want to. You win by killing the other players team most of the times. Orcs and Dorfs cant get Claw to remove AV 9-10 completly. Huge difference. You dont think Chaos use Guard?

Or you can make it so you can veto 1 or 2 races from all your games. Untill Cyanide decide to "fix" the clawproblem.

So remove CLaw from the open Leagues and you can keep it in your private ones, what is the problem?

@dode74 said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

@supergnu said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

Just ask Dode about CPOMB and Chaos domination and he would (atleast in the past) bring up the Chaos sub 50% WR as a counter argument without understanding that a newly created team dont have CPOMB.

What makes you think I don't understand that? Are you under the impression CPOMB (and particularly claw) isn't intended to increase attrition rates at high TV, thereby preventing the higher-AV teams from continually increasing in TV? Or don't you realise that the ONLY balance criteria BB uses is lifetime win rates? Or do you perhaps not know that even at high TV the win rates of chaos teams are actually not the highest at all?

Becuse every time the CPOMB thing has come up in the past you have been gagging on about Chaos bad WR. Wich is funny as you once provided a link to stats to prove your point. And you where correct, chaos had bad/average WR on TV1000, on 2000+ they had 70-85% WR however, depending on what race they where playing against.

So basicly what you are saying is that CLAW is the only way to keep AV9/8 Races from getting to high TV? That is in my eyes a huge flaw of the game if that is why there is Claw in the game. Why is it a bad thing if bashteams go high in TV? Exactly what is the problem with that? So what you are saying is that it is okey for a race to have 70-85% WR on TV2k+ becuse they are bad at TV1k? That is the dumbest thing i have ever heard.
No wonder the game is where it is if Cyanide is listening to you to "improve" the game. Atleast they did not implement VM's idea of infinite Wizards.

@dragonloup said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

@dode74 ok for the challenge/cherry picking mode . I used it and abused it bb1 it was fun. But your are bringing back farming on large scale. I can say for a fact that your datas are not reliable on that matter (unless you trim the cheaters from it) . People had 2 accounts, run the game in parrallal and built custom team. Or play with their buddy to just score or pass till they get the skill set they want. So of course they are not going to concede and loose mvp. If you can filter the cheaters on your meta then i ll take your point otherwise i am dubious about the challenge mode as the way forward. Anyway if it helps improving the chat system i would support it even if don t beleive in it. It would still be a nice addition for people who have limited time

Take a look at FUMBBL if you want data which is filtered for cheaters/picking etc. Picking does happen there but not on the scale of BB1 - it's policed. It's still vastly better than MM in terms of variety.

@supergnu said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

1. If that is the case, why do you think that is?

Why do I think what is? You mean the median and mean TVs? Because it's so easy to concede and restart a team in MM and if it doesn't start well then people simply restart with a fresh team. That sort of behaviour in a league gets you booted out, but the ability to start a team at any tie is one of the important concepts of MM.

2. Not a problem? Silly high? 2200 you get from casualy playing normaly and you still will have a team that is lacking a lot of skills. However most people will never get herebecuse their team will die before they hit 2.2k mark. Where is the attrition for the chaos teams? Oh yea there are none becuse they never fight eachother becuse they dont want their killers to be killed. The format is not correctly made.

Their team is supposed to take attrition at those TV levels. The problem is people give up on their team. You do see teams at 2200+ in private leagues and people don't give up on them for the same reason as given above. Turns out they can do pretty damned well with them, too. It's analogous to giving up on T2 just because you took a LOS cas: you can still win the match.
And yes, there is a lack of attrition for the killer teams themselves in MM because they simply concede to each other.

3. You should actually play some games in the official COL league at 1700+ TV. COL have the issue with chaos becuse they have CPOMB. Simple as that. All of their characters can easily get CPOMB and they dont sacrifice anything for it. They are fast, they are averagly agile, they have average armor and they have access to CPOMB on normal rolls on every single player if they want to. You win by killing the other players team most of the times. Orcs and Dorfs cant get Claw to remove AV 9-10 completly. Huge difference. You dont think Chaos use Guard?

You're assuming the answer to the question when you say "simple as that". You've decided beforehand what the answer is so there's no point in discussing it with you because it's like a religious belief: "it just is". The rest of the post is rationalisation. Personally I'd prefer to go in with an open mind and work out what the problem is rather than deciding beforehand.
With that in mind, Orc/Dorf were the issue in LRB4 according to FUMBBL. Chaos can use guard but they start out with far fewer skills and need to take others to become reliable before taking guard. Chaos also need less guard due to the fact that all of their players can take a Blitz action at ST4 - that's pretty powerful in itself. Pact doesn't get that and we don't see major high-TV issues with Pact, for example (low TV is a different matter in MM).

Or you can make it so you can veto 1 or 2 races from all your games. Untill Cyanide decide to "fix" the clawproblem.

So remove CLaw from the open Leagues and you can keep it in your private ones, what is the problem?

Because plenty of people think competitive BB should be played with the full rules. It's far easier, simpler, and better to modify the environment rather than change the rules for the environment.
Challenge would answer your desires, though: if it were implemented you could simply refuse to play any claw teams.

@supergnu said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

Becuse every time the CPOMB thing has come up in the past you have been gagging on about Chaos bad WR. Wich is funny as you once provided a link to stats to prove your point. And you where correct, chaos had bad/average WR on TV1000, on 2000+ they had 70-85% WR however, depending on what race they where playing against.

They absolutely did not have a 70-85% win%. FUMBBL B puts them at 57.87% at 2000+ and at 54.46% above 1800TV. WE, Elves and DE all perform better at high TV than Chaos. Are you calling for an Elven nerf?

So basicly what you are saying is that CLAW is the only way to keep AV9/8 Races from getting to high TV? That is in my eyes a huge flaw of the game if that is why there is Claw in the game. Why is it a bad thing if bashteams go high in TV? Exactly what is the problem with that? So what you are saying is that it is okey for a race to have 70-85% WR on TV2k+ becuse they are bad at TV1k? That is the dumbest thing i have ever heard.

No, I'm not saying that because it's not happening. An equalisation of attrition rates is required in order to prevent any team getting to higher TVs, not just bash teams. That can be done on-pitch or off-pitch. LRB4 ageing was used previously and was generally hated, and the BBRC took that to mean something on-pitch was wanted and created the current version of claw to do that, while removing ageing. I now think they misinterpreted that, and what coaches actually wanted was a semblance of control over who they lost rather than being punished for levelling players. BB2016's rules on Seasons is the latest method, and I think it works better, personally: it's equal to all teams and allows coaches to choose who to retire within budgetary limitations. Personally I think the mistake BB2016 made was the change to PO: they should have instead changed claw when implementing seasons, making it less punishing in general. Changing PO wasn't a nerf to Chaos as much as it was a nerf to other bash/hybrid teams and a veritable boost to elven teams.

Had to check.
I guess it depends on environment, but here are some numbers for CCL IX.
Please note the terrible sample sizes so don't go bananas over the numbers:

TV >= 1800: http://tiny.cc/iul8ny
TV >= 1700: http://tiny.cc/v0l8ny
TV >= 1600: http://tiny.cc/rtl8ny

These links show average w / d / l per game grouped by race.
The Count column shows number of games results included
Win% is not shown but is (w+d/2).

Unfortunately sample size is terrible at these high TV.

Not enough games to say anything for >= 1800, but at >= 1700 they have a win% of 70% over 62 games, which is a bit better than the average of 48% for chaos.
At >= 1600 they have 63% over 110 games.

Interesting to note that the overall strong team Undead (58% win%) gets down to 50% win% already at >= 1600.

:::

To start fiddling yourself, go to http://www.mordrek.com/goblinSpy/web/goblinSpy.html
click Teammatches->stats/game
click Edit button to open the query
change Group by to Race
change the <hide> in front of idrace to <show> so that you get to see the race column.

Now you can add filter where you set Teamvalue >= 1700 or whatever and press "Execute query"

You get some columns with teamname etc that you should just ignore because they can be anything when grouping.
:::

As you say, tiny sample sizes. That leads not only to large margins of error but to an increased effect of biases such as those due to coaching skill.

@dode74 said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

Personally I think the mistake BB2016 made was the change to PO: they should have instead changed claw when implementing seasons, making it less punishing in general.

Why do you think that? And in what way would you have liked claw to be changed?

I personally think Claw is much needed for Chaos/Nurgle if they ever want to compete against AV9 teams.

And as you said, attrition is a way to balance things out at high TV. I see no issue with CPOMB, especially with data proving Chaos are not the at the top even at high TV.
Perhaps I'd have increased the efficiency of fouls to punish a bit those Piling On too much, but with BB2016 PO is dead anyway.

Well Seasons is the attrition-leveller for all teams, which was the point of claw. With both PO gone and Seasons as well as Claw taking their toll it will be interesting to see how some of the bash/hybrid teams do. There are plenty of ways to change claw to have a reduced long-term effect, of course, such as "any casualty which resulted from claw is no worse than BH (or MNG, or whatever)" (equivalence with Stunty BH effect on a 9) - that's top-of-my head, ofc.

One of the issues with CPOMB is the variance, so perhaps I would have been more clear to say that the way they changed PO was poor (rather than to suggest that any change to PO would be bad): instead of simply nerfing it out of existence they could have made it have an effect with less variance - a modifier or similar rather than two optional rerolls.

So in short, were I given a blank slate I would:

• introduce Seasons to create attrition equivalence,
• reduce the long-term effect of claw to remove the previous mechanism for that for high AV teams while maintaining on-pitch effect, and
• alter PO to reduce the variance (not the mean) of its effect.

A bit hand-wavy and it'd need some maths to flesh it out, but it's far from being an insurmountable problem.

Edit: I would also want it to be tested for a bit first, ofc.

Claw + MB breaks armor on 7+ which is a bit OP in my opinion.
I guess a reasonable nerf to Claw would be it breaks any armor on 9+ instead of 8+.
In this way, you don't change fundamental game mechanics, don't make any skill useless and keeps attrition (a reduced one of course).

Another possibility would be to have MB and Claw mutually exclusive, basically forcing to build Anti High Av killers (Claw), or Low Av Killers (MB).
BB 2016 nerfing to PO was the worst possible way to reduce attrition, making a skill useless, and it being a one which have a drawback already.

@dode74 said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

reduce the long-term effect of claw to remove the previous mechanism for that for high AV teams while maintaining on-pitch effect

I still don't see the issue here as no data seem to indicate CPOMB is being OP or a problem but, if needs be, I would improve the apo before nerfing Claw (even removing the long-term effect is already nerfing as it is a sound strategy to kill/permanently injure a main piece of a team to prepare for future competition, also causing death can mean free rotter for Nurgle).

Make it a safe save of the player's life if you prey the chaos god who gave Claw to the opponent to help you with your apo:

• if your team isn't already affiliated with this god, you get -2 fan factor for preying the wrong god once per game;
• roll a dice, anything but a 1 means the player is safe in the substitute box, a 1 means you roll apo as usual (in both case the apo is used).

Edit: I would also want it to be tested for a bit first, ofc.

Of course

I still don't see the issue here as no data seem to indicate CPOMB is being OP or a problem but, if needs be, I would improve the apo before nerfing Claw (even removing the long-term effect is already nerfing as it is a sound strategy to kill/permanently injure a main piece of a team to prepare for future competition, also causing death can mean free rotter for Nurgle).

Yep, I'm thinking from a merely mechanistic perspective that if an attrition method is added then another should probably be reduced. I'm talking specifically about CPOMB in a Seasons environment.
I agree that there are better options than a direct nerf to claw: I've already suggested several times a "medical facility" whereby anyone who is MNG or worse post-match can make another Apo roll if they've not already made one. This has the advantage over a lone apo of having a greater effect the more injuries you've taken, thereby reducing variance.

@supergnu said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

Ask your self this, wich players are keeping the game alive, the "1 games per week" crowd or the "i play when i get the time and for fun" crowd (that also tend to play a LOT of BB when they can) ?

Well, given that the game is a Table Top game, and GW are a Table Top company, and they've just re-released the game and sold 10,000+ units then I'd say the "1 games per week" crowd are doing a good job.
Add in that this game was being kept alive before the Cyanide game game along.

Not that there's anything wrong with digital players - I've played quite a few across a table over the last few years.

But this is a digital reproduction of a tabletop game (Cyanides/Focus's words), this is not a digital game based on/inspired by Blood Bowl - they tried that with the Real Time mode in BB1, and look where that ended up.

Personally I think the "Seasons" idea is nearly (nearly!) as bad as Ageing, but then I've always hated "off field" stuff (the old "Off for a Bite" and old "Take Root" for example).

The PO nerf was awful though - whoever came up with that idea had zero clue.

@mordrek said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

I guess it depends on environment, but here are some numbers for CCL IX.
Please note the terrible sample sizes so don't go bananas over the numbers:

It's pretty important to correct for composition when looking at win rates in these open play environments - certain rosters end up profoundly over-represented at certain TV levels, and the win rates of each roster will end up unduly influenced by the demographics at those TV levels based on their ability to beat the rosters they'll meet there.

Chaos is the usual example of this - their win rates seem to go up significantly as TV levels does... but if you look at composition, the higher TV ranges have an over-representation of bash teams. Bash is what claw is good at dealing with, which makes Chaos king of bashing at high TV which, in turn, pushes up their win rate against bash teams which happen to form most of the population at those levels.

Correct for composition, however, and those win rates slide back down to levels quite close to their low TV win rates.

@darkson said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

Personally I think the "Seasons" idea is nearly (nearly!) as bad as Ageing, but then I've always hated "off field" stuff (the old "Off for a Bite" and old "Take Root" for example).

It gives the coach far more control over team attrition while ensuring that the overall rate of attrition is even across all the teams. In terms of making BB a competitive game it's actually a decent system (albeit one that needs refining) as on-pitch attrition applies attrition in a terribly uneven way across the various rosters. For tabletop, well... people can easily just ignore the rules they don't like.

@voodoomike said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

Correct for composition, however, and those win rates slide back down to levels quite close to their low TV win rates.

True, but isn't bash being alone at the top part of the problem?
If you correct for composition you get win% for a random opponent, but you don't get a random opponent at high TV, you get a bash team.

If we had a lower TV ceiling or allow non-bash to survive better at high TV then claw/killstack wouldn't be considered a problem.

@mordrek said in Another day with Claw, sad...:

True, but isn't bash being alone at the top part of the problem?

Not in terms of balance. That's an environmental issue rather than a game rules issue. You don't see the same in other environments.

If we had a lower TV ceiling or allow non-bash to survive better at high TV then claw/killstack wouldn't be considered a problem.

There are lots of ways to deal with it, but the problem isn't that chaos win too much but that they kill too much: people don't like losing their players. If this was a "winning" issue then people would be calling for elves to be nerfed.

But yes, improving survival rates for the high variance games would help people hold on to their precious pixels - hence the medical facility proposal. Thing is, even that can result in your staff being more like Harold Shipman than Florence Nightingale, so you can still get stomped and people will still complain.