Board 8 > Mercenaries, Draft Edition: The Sign-Up Topic

(+) Yeah! (+)

Eddv posted...

I actually do need to ask about what will be happening with buydowns/tiers and how that will work.

A lot of drafting strat will depend on it

Same as in M4. I want to try new things but I feel like this version of draftmerx isn't the right place for it. If it goes smoothly and people still want to play more, I think the next one might implement some tweaks, though.
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Oh so that 20/ week is for buydowns and terrain and...attacker status?
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Eddv posted...

Oh so that 20/ week is for buydowns and terrain and...attacker status?

Bingo. Think how the playoffs worked.
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Oh, and to bring this back up:

Also we should be able to bid starting gp on our snake draft position.

Opposed to this because it creates a situation where players can make very suboptimal plays before the game's even really begun. Will implement some other method that allows players to determine draft order without spending GP though, since nobody likes getting randomed.
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KanzarisKelshen posted...

Eddv posted...

Oh so that 20/ week is for buydowns and terrain and...attacker status?

Bingo. Think how the playoffs worked.

How playoffs worked for me at least.

The rest of you jokers were still buying things.
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Players can make suboptimal plays during the draft too not sure why they need protection.
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Lopen posted...

Players can make suboptimal plays during the draft too not sure why they need protection.

Mostly wanting to keep the newbies from getting eaten alive by the vets really - it's easy to fix your team's issues after you've seen it in play for a couple weeks. If you haven't played mercs before it's hard to really calculate the value of GP spent on the draft compared to everything else, which could lead to some very easy Ls from not being able to buy paydowns or a decent terrain.
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I mean you could always make a bid cap of some sort that doesn't totally hamstring a guy.

Mostly I just can't see another way to decide it that isn't random.
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Lopen posted...

I mean you could always make a bid cap of some sort that doesn't totally hamstring a guy.

Mostly I just can't see another way to decide it that isn't random.

I was thinking Lowest Unique Bidder - 'pick a positive, integer number, lowest one that's not picked by multiple people wins'. So say three people are guessing - two pick 1, a third one picks 2, the guy who picked 2 wins because his number was the lowest unique one (people who tie are tiebroken based on who sent their bid in soonest - if multiple numbers repeat, then the one that repeats less gets priority, so if the bids were 1/1/1/2/2/3, 3 goes first, the 2s go second and third, and the 1s fill the last few spots). Thoughts?
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Oh wait I see what you're saying

The lowest bid amount that's unique.

That'd be weird but maybe okay.
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Lopen posted...

Interesting idea, but assuming the draft is snake style I'm not sure the top numbers are even better given how many good mercs there are. I'd personally actually want pick 8 so I'd have back to back picks and could have a strong synergy in the two picks.

You could always not make it snake but that's actually worse I think.

Snake is probably the fairest draft I think - it makes it so that yeah, the worst possible spot you can get is somewhere around 4/5 and even that is none too shabby. The reason calculated bidding is interesting is that it:

A) Puts the draft order in the hands of the players, so nobody can say they got RNG'd out, and

B) Gives you a measure of control if you can predict people well (which is a vital Mercs skill anyway).

For these reasons I think it's a solid way to set up the initial draft.

(Also, I have my personal thoughts about what an 'optimal' draft looks like but I don't want to skew it. We'll see how it all actually pans out!)

EDIT:

Oh wait I see what you're saying

The lowest bid amount that's unique.

That'd be weird but maybe okay.

Bingo. You're trying to pick the lowest unique number, which gets you the earliest possible spot. That number could be 1, 2, or 30000, but so long as it's the lowest one that nobody else picked you go first.
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I think it should be lowest unique bid gets to pick what slot they want, rather than goes first. Some people may actually want lower draft numbers as I said.
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Lopen posted...

I think it should be lowest unique bid gets to pick what slot they want, rather than goes first. Some people may actually want lower draft numbers as I said.

Yeah, that's fair. Gives it an incentive to try to bid as low as possible without overlapping.
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Unfortunately, there are too many characters I don't recognize to be able to enjoy playing or voting
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someone co-lead with me :(

or someone playing take me on as your creative synergies consultant
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Deal. It'll be like old times
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I know that this game is using mercs from Mercs 5, but would this not be a decent opportunity to add in a couple mercs that have been recently made to see how they do?
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GANON1025 posted...

I know that this game is using mercs from Mercs 5, but would this not be a decent opportunity to add in a couple mercs that have been recently made to see how they do?

I kinda want to play a game with as many known quantities as possible ruleswise, before getting fancy. This is a new format, and I think it's important to get solid data on what failings it has without having to worry about the mercenaries being stupid, broken or gamewarping first. If draftmerx does well enough to guarantee a second game, it will definitely include new mercs though.

banananor posted...

Unfortunately, there are too many characters I don't recognize to be able to enjoy playing or voting

Aww, don't think like that! You don't need to know every merc to do well in Mercenaries. It can give you an advantage if you enjoy sinking in tons of hours on research, but it's perfectly feasible to stick to big names and still get good work done (and as a voter, the leaders are supposed to sell you on their mercs, so if you have any doubts you can just ask them when a match topic goes up). I think most of the playoff contenders did only a bit of research and still got really far in M4. It's not as big a deal as it looks.
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What happens with 1/1/2/2/3/3000, who goes second?

My guess is that the ordering is:

3, 30000, 2, 2, 1, 1 with ties decided randomly.

MasaomiHouzuki posted...

What happens with 1/1/2/2/3/3000, who goes second?

My guess is that the ordering is:

3, 30000, 2, 2, 1, 1 with ties decided randomly.

3, 3000, 1, 1, 2, 2, but yes. If it was 111 then you'd get 3, 3k, 2*2, 1*3.
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After giving this a lot of thought (ironically more than I intend to going forward), I'll participate in this going with the FFD approach. Match topic arguing is bad enough without investing yourself in it and losing your mind over shifty voting.

Oh, and this is also dependant on there being 16 slots.
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I'll have to check how many signups we have so far - I think there's enough nonconditional ones to count on one group, but we're one or two players off from two.
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Have their been any newcomers so far?

Skyridge87 posted...

Have their been any newcomers so far?

Like three plus multiple people who didn't play in M4

List of Applicants so far
Eddv
DC
Mewtwo
IGCD
Boko
Tiro
Johnbobb
Miz
Scare
Tom
Corrik
Eaed
FFD?
Lopen
Luis

Currently at 15 if FFD wants to play, 14 if not. With one (two?) more players there will be a minimum number high enough for two simultaneous games, which would mean being able to institute 'unaffiliated' voting where leaders can't vote on matches that are part of their own game (if a majority of the potential players are up for it). Pretty excited about that prospect!
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What's the draft structure in terms of time? I can't imagine that process not being long with 11 rounds
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It can't be an hour, or 6, anything less than 12 is really unfair.

A reasonable approach could be instead of having 12 to 24 hours between picks, make each player send in their top 8 picks every X hours. Although that won't let us react to completely unexpected picks that we may want to build around. I'm not advocating for this!

Maybe players can sign up for X hour long time slots in advance that they are totally comfortable drafting during to help move things along, although that might not work preferentially on the reverse snake round.

I don't have a good solution, what do the rest of you think?
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I have more suggestions that might make this game more mercs like and help newer players:

Multiple drafts. Why do all 11 mercs at once? Maybe split the drafts into between tier changes. Draft three separate times 4/4/3.

That gives players an opportunity to fix their teams and build around interactions in other teams after seeing them fight, which is way more mercs like.
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This is actually a way better idea from Boko and I support splitting up the drafts.

Gives us a nice time where we have small match topics too
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yeah but kanz hates power curves
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Well I actually don't support the tier change idea either

4 mercs early to cover all 3 tiers seems like money though.
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MajinZidane posted...

It can't be an hour, or 6, anything less than 12 is really unfair.

A reasonable approach could be instead of having 12 to 24 hours between picks, make each player send in their top 8 picks every X hours. Although that won't let us react to completely unexpected picks that we may want to build around. I'm not advocating for this!

Maybe players can sign up for X hour long time slots in advance that they are totally comfortable drafting during to help move things along, although that might not work preferentially on the reverse snake round.

I don't have a good solution, what do the rest of you think?

My solution is simply to ask people to commit to a timeframe and then do picks with fifteen minutes to make your choices (per slot) once the ball gets rolling. If you don't pick your slot gets skipped and gets put at the end of the queue, and players have a max of 24 hours to finish their draft. Arbitrary? Yes. But considering people will only have to be present for a solid chunk of time once during the project (unless they want to do some 25-dimensional counterdrafting later on which I think is wholly unnecessary), it feels like a simple and elegant solution. Anything else will just be longer and more complicated.
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I guess I'll sign up if we're one short of 16.

I'm interested in trying it.
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That's 17! We have enough players for two games now, wooooo
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Why not go for 24. You can be just as ambitious as we were.

Editor's Note: Don't do this.
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Why 24 when you can do 1...24?
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Lopen posted...

Well I actually don't support the tier change idea either

4 mercs early to cover all 3 tiers seems like money though.

Oh I totally meant all three tiers then redraft
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KanzarisKelshen posted...

MajinZidane posted...

It can't be an hour, or 6, anything less than 12 is really unfair.

A reasonable approach could be instead of having 12 to 24 hours between picks, make each player send in their top 8 picks every X hours. Although that won't let us react to completely unexpected picks that we may want to build around. I'm not advocating for this!

Maybe players can sign up for X hour long time slots in advance that they are totally comfortable drafting during to help move things along, although that might not work preferentially on the reverse snake round.

I don't have a good solution, what do the rest of you think?

My solution is simply to ask people to commit to a timeframe and then do picks with fifteen minutes to make your choices (per slot) once the ball gets rolling. If you don't pick your slot gets skipped and gets put at the end of the queue, and players have a max of 24 hours to finish their draft. Arbitrary? Yes. But considering people will only have to be present for a solid chunk of time once during the project (unless they want to do some 25-dimensional counterdrafting later on which I think is wholly unnecessary), it feels like a simple and elegant solution. Anything else will just be longer and more complicated.

Yeah but how long of a timeframe this draft is gonna take forever if it's 11 rounds
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Yeah but how long of a timeframe this draft is gonna take forever if it's 11 rounds

A day or two. If by that point it isn't finished then I will hard random all the slots a player didn't fill. I appreciate that everyone has a life but it's pretty easy to do a draft throughout the course of a few hours if the players show up and are interested. Having actually done drafts before, a snake draft of ten slots took about an hour and a half with eight players, using five minute timers after which the slot was randomized or filled in with a 'cookie cutter' pick based purely on stats. I'm pretty sure everyone can spare two hours during one predetermined evening to draft.
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the trick is predetermining an evening that twelve specific people can show up!
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Tom Bombadil posted...

the trick is predetermining an evening that twelve specific people can show up!

Eight

Two groups of eight gon be the players! That reduces the difficulty somewhat.
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Will we have one 16 person draft or two 8 player drafts with repeats allowed? I think I'd prefer the former, but that changes drafting strategy somewhat.
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Thinking 8 player draft with repeats. One of the reasons I wanted to run a small draft was so we wouldn't have to deal with the bullshit that was merc supply vs demand in M4 (not to say M4 was bad about releasing mercs regularly - it's just that since players DIDN'T get their economies killed the second they lost twice or thrice in a row, there were too many buyers for the entire duration of the game, compared to the number of mercs we got). I want people to build the teams they want, within reason.
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Maybe
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Also id only wanna play 16 or 24

8 is too low, too many super teams I think
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greengravy294 posted...

Also id only wanna play 16 or 24

8 is too low, too many super teams I think

I kinda agree, but I think 11 mercs is just way too many. But that's just me.
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MajinZidane posted...

greengravy294 posted...

Also id only wanna play 16 or 24

8 is too low, too many super teams I think

I kinda agree, but I think 11 mercs is just way too many. But that's just me.

11 mercs is what an endgame team looked like for most players. That's kinda the point of the draft - 'build your ideal endgame team. Then play it to victory'.
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KanzarisKelshen posted...

Currently at 15 if FFD wants to play,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FyU1a4c1Tdk
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embrace the hate
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@Dantezoid I require appropriate wrestling gifs to persuade FFD to GIVE IN TO THE DARKNESS

GRANT ME YOUR POWER
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