0% SR would mean less boston raging. I wouldn't know how to entertain myself without boston raging.

I dunno, I've had plenty of Boston raging even with 0% SR...

@gnuff: western russia would've been the better option to take as first bonus. Your leftovers weren't great but good enough to ensure you get a western russia. Of course you was a bit unlucky but that loss would've been avoidable

after the starts was likely he had other russia, wasn't a good idea try russia first.

It is a ladder, why shouldn't the better moves win? I mean would you want your favorite sports team to go out there with equipment that fails %20 of the time on average in a championship game? Take soccer, since it is global. You want laces in the players shoes that are only %80 effective? So that on %20 of scoring chances (maybe a guy on a break away), the guy's shoe comes off? Is that what you really want to see when you are measuring the best of the best?

I'm not sure what the best way to analogize the 3vs2 compared to 4vs2 situation is, but this is definitely not it. Because of the ease in which you can make it 100% instead of 80% (add an extra army) it isn't comparable to football, which is also very much luck based.

I think as mentioned by Beren even though in some specific games it can hinder you outrageously, on average it will be even (even if this means playing an infinite number of games) so on average it won't affect how good you actually are. And if you wish to measure "the best of the best" just play a best of 9. The first person to win 5 games wins - which means the luck in each individual game should be counterbalanced to make it possible to decide who is better.

I think it not only makes games more interesting in terms of risk management, I think it also makes games more enjoyable compared to having to think about every single leftover and exactly how many armies the enemy has, which is tiresome to have to do every single turn to know what is happening.

please make it 0% SR, it would make the games more strategic

I think as mentioned by Beren even though in some specific games it can hinder you outrageously, on average it will be even (even if this means playing an infinite number of games) so on average it won't affect how good you actually are

Perfect, so i assume in long run i will just lose some games by luck without cannot stop it, fantastic!!!!!!
i think at least 10 out 100 games are lost by bad luck ATM.

Edited 8/11/2015 15:06:13

Here is my issue with it. Yes, it evens out at times. Let's roll with gnuff's numbers and assume %10 of games are decided by luck. Perhaps if you switched to true skill or something, it would not matter. But since you play 20 games to get ranked, someone can avoid those bad luck games. Maybe they play 16 with no real advantage/disadvantage and a couple with good luck and a couple where the opponent got bad luck. So they win 4 they should not have, maybe go 18-2 when they should have been 14-6 in a no luck world. They take #1 when they really played like a player in the 30s-50s perhaps.

Sure, it all evens out over time, but in small samples you get more variance. So while their next 80 games might be more of an indicator of their skill, they still got that trophy.

It happens on the flip side too. Someone may lose 4 games based on luck in a 20 game run and should have been much higher.

You may be fine with that scenario, personally I don't care for it. One solution is up the min amount to be ranked (as suggested), but if you do that, I bet you just get less participation on ladders in general.

My two cents:
I like the 16% and random move order, but would prefer 4 picks. 0% SR is great and I make many games with it, but it would make the ladder a bit stale and repetitive. Leaving an element of chance in is alright in my opinion, a knowledgeable player will weight the risks and accept that sometimes gambles pay off, sometimes they don't.

No-luck cyclical has no place outside of coin games.

Edited 8/11/2015 15:22:02

I'm not sure what the best way to analogize the 3vs2 compared to 4vs2 situation is, but this is definitely not it. Because of the ease in which you can make it 100% instead of 80% (add an extra army) it isn't comparable to football, which is also very much luck based.

Maybe my analogy is not the best, but I don't see how football/soccer is very much luck based. Outside the foul calls of a ref, how is it luck based? you might say a guy was in the right place at the right time, and that is luck based...but it is not. He chose to be there, whether it was the correct position or not (based on scheme). You might say the ball bounced unlucky off a foot, but it did not. Someone put their foot in that exact manner, and really just misjudged it. I mean unless weather is a factor, or the refs...I don't see luck there.

I will have to think about a better analogy. I guess I just don't like the reasoning for luck that it is a known risk, so it is fine.

I think saying that 10 out of 100 games are decided by luck is ludicrous. Maybe if you have two players of essentially equal skill that would be the case, but if you had two player of equal skill, then of course luck is going to play a larger role in the game. It will still do so in "pure skill" games, since you will have to guess what your opponent will do at some point, or you may lack intel.

If you're playing against a player who is worse than you, you will almost always have an opportunity to make up for bad luck.

In a 20 game run to try to get to #1 on the ladder, how many games do you even play against "good" players, where luck is even relevant? Probably only 10, so you're talking about luck swinging maybe 1 game. That doesn't seem like enough to justify all the luck complaints we get.

...if you had two player of equal skill, then of course luck is going to play a larger role in the game. It will still do so in "pure skill" games, since you will have to guess what your opponent will do at some point, or you may lack intel.

If you're playing against a player who is worse than you, you will almost always have an opportunity to make up for bad luck.

In a 20 game run to try to get to #1 on the ladder, how many games do you even play against "good" players, where luck is even relevant? Probably only 10, so you're talking about luck swinging maybe 1 game. That doesn't seem like enough to justify all the luck complaints we get.

I disagree with that first part. It is not luck to guess your opponents moves. You guys are confusing variables and luck here. Luck means it is outside your control. If you predict wrong (that happens in chess as well), that means your opponent outplayed you that turn. There is no luck involved in picking the wrong moves.

I also disagree on your 2nd point. If the player is significantly worse, sure. But let's say you are are playing someone maybe 200 rating points lower than you. If you get bad luck, they will beat you, even if you predict all moves correctly.

As far as the number that are decided by bad luck...I don't know. That is very hard to measure because you have wrong choices in games all the time that factor in as well. You'd have to maybe take a sample of games from the ladder with great players less likely to make bad moves and analyze the moves perhaps. Personally, I would say maybe %5 might be more accurate, but it could be %10, I don't know.

1v1 Ladder - Keep the settings, but change the map to Modified Medium Earth.
2v2 Ladder - I like the number of picks, but I'd prefer them in 0% SR.

Why do people actually care about the ranks people get with ladder runs? When someone gets rank 1 with more than 50 ladder games played or has a really impressive winstreak, we congratulate them. Otherwise we boo and hiss at them for stalling and not being a great player, then laugh when they do play around 50 ladder games and end up outside the top 10.

I think anyone making the argument about ranking in terms of what template we should use is wasting their time. So what? Does that honestly affect how much you enjoy the template or not?

Maybe my analogy is not the best, but I don't see how football/soccer is very much luck based. Outside the foul calls of a ref, how is it luck based? you might say a guy was in the right place at the right time, and that is luck based...but it is not. He chose to be there, whether it was the correct position or not (based on scheme). You might say the ball bounced unlucky off a foot, but it did not. Someone put their foot in that exact manner, and really just misjudged it. I mean unless weather is a factor, or the refs...I don't see luck there.

I will have to think about a better analogy. I guess I just don't like the reasoning for luck that it is a known risk, so it is fine.

I would disagree massively with what you just said. Although a lot of where they place themselves in the pitch, when they make runs, how they kick and header the ball etc. is practise and meant to happen, if you just take in account free kicks for instance. A free kick is when the ball is placed on the floor and you get to take your time to kick it without the other team kicking it first (although they can set up a "wall" to block it about 10 yards away). You can see that even in practise, where the ball will go (top corner or not) will change every time they go for it. It isn't like everytime they try something it happens as they meant it, so I would argue that whether or not what they go for comes off or not is luck based (let's say it will come off 50% of the time) whether or not their shots go in is luck based.

However we are getting too sidetracked, whether your analogy is good or not shouldn't take away from the discussion which is if we should change strat 1v1 settings.

+1 update auto templates to use pure skill

@Lolo - no, whether someone undeserving gets #1 does not effect my desire to play the ladder. But the opposite is true. The fact that better players don't win as often as they should (on 2v2 ladder) does deter people from playing it.

Bad luck always makes games not fun for me. I try hard not to complain about it but no doubt it sours the experience for me. Less luck = more fun IMO. So the template makes the ladder fun/not more than any ranking changes. For example, I find the random bonus ladder fun despite the rankings being a bit odd (no separation).

...if you just take in account free kicks for instance. A free kick is when the ball is placed on the floor and you get to take your time to kick it without the other team kicking it first (although they can set up a "wall" to block it about 10 yards away). You can see that even in practise, where the ball will go (top corner or not) will change every time they go for it. It isn't like everytime they try something it happens as they meant it, so I would argue that whether or not what they go for comes off or not is luck based (let's say it will come off 50% of the time) whether or not their shots go in is luck based.

But that is not luck. The fact that the ball goes a different place just means that an exact kick is basically impossible to replicate. You still have %100 control over your body striking the ball. If the ball does not go where you want, it means you did not strike it exactly as you meant to. Luck is something outside your control (a gust of wind, a bad patch in the field causing a trip). Luck does happen, but I think people use that word far too often in sports. At any rate, you are correct...this sidetrack is not needed, let's let it die.

Edited 8/11/2015 18:13:05

Also in the 2v2 there would be an advantage in getting your teammate to take a screen shot of the map and give you, so that you decide on the picks before loading the map.

That's actually not true anymore. It was true when NLC first launched, but we since fixed it. Now, in a team game with NLC, the collective speed of your team is determined by the slowest player in that team.

I am always for removing luck. But, i also am not a fan of the speed of picking factoring in.

You are right -- NLC really was added for coin games, and I don't think it should be added to the ladders. We should just be talking about 0% SR Cyclic.

directed to the prospect of adding 4 picks per player: I think this gives people too much coverage on the map. As I play the template more and more the limitation of only having 2 picks per player has been growing on me

I agree. I'd like to try and de-emphasize the picking stage, since I think the main moving-armies part of the game is more fun than picking.

I like risk management and find it a crucial aspect for high-level games, and not even just WarLight but lots of other games as well. Optimizing your moves and attacks is easy to do compared to risk vs reward and whether the pot odds are favorable enough.

I agree, I like the risk management aspect too. Deciding whether to attack a 2 with 3 or 4 adds strategy to the game and is fun. But at the same time, WarLight has been moving towards no-luck settings as a whole, and the risk management that comes from randomness might have to be a casualty of that (at least, as far as the ladders go.)

There is still risk management even in 0% SR, it's just a different kind of risk management.

If you think there should be less emphasis on picking, then making it 0% SR would not be a way to do this. It allows people to work out exactly how they'd expand from different positions, and I feel it would make the picking stage a more important part of the game.

That's actually not true anymore. It was true when NLC first launched, but we since fixed it. Now, in a team game with NLC, the collective speed of your team is determined by the slowest player in that team.

Still, sharing map with teammates gives you advantage - as you know they won't be slower than you. It's not as big advantage as earlier, but it is.