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Author Topic: Potential Value in Marking Tables as Competitive vs Casual  (Read 1591 times)

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December 28, 2021, 11:21:08 PM
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Phallen Cassidy

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Potential Value in Marking Tables as Competitive vs Casual
« on: December 28, 2021, 11:21:08 PM »
I stumbled upon something that made me mull over the idea of allowing casual tables to be marked as "ranked" in Gemp. I've been against this in the past for a few reasons, the biggest ones being that:

1. The community is too small to support doubling the number of formats / halving the player base. I expect some players to prefer casual or ranked and not wish to spend much time in the other, so depending on how many players that encompasses and how strongly they feel about it this could make for a very rough transition. "Doubling / halving" is an exaggeration, I admit -- I'd be surprised if more than 10% of the player base would have an exclusive connection to ranked or casual exclusively. That's enough to increase wait times on tables though.

2. Soft expectations will form around what is acceptable in casual. This already happens to a degree, but the easy out is that many times there's no other way to play a format than with a casual table. Part of this is the point, that bringing discard or GLR or a fine-tuned choke deck should absolutely be forbidden in casual. However, new players are both going to be the ones most strongly drawn to casual and the ones most likely to breach these soft expectations. If a new player looks at discard or choke or the Elf/Man + Uruk-hai deck they found on the forums and want to give it a shot without subjecting themselves to the perceived perils of ranked, they should be able to -- that's exactly what casual ought to enable.

This point is my main concern. Half of the goal here is to allow casual tables to foster that local card shop positive playing experience, which can't happen if the first thing that happens to a new player is they get chastised for playing the "wrong" deck. Right now there's no real way to know when the person you're playing against is a hardened pro or hasn't yet learned about the Rule of 4. And it's very important to ensure that hardened pros are *encouraged* to play casual, preferably leaving their tournament decks at the door. They're the ones who are going to know what a positive playing experience is in the first place, so they're the ones who can create it. Winning in casual should never be a bad thing.


3. Poor performance in ranked will be weaponized. By definition if there are above-average players, there are going to be below-average players. Nobody should be left avoiding ranked because they're not star players, but run out of casual because they want to use GLR. This is basically the other side of point 2; maybe I'm being over-dramatic, but I don't want to add fuel to the scuffles that occasionally break out in the game hall. This has a pretty easy solution that can be built into it though, just don't make these numbers public. Maybe a leaderboard of the top X players, but there's no reason for anyone to know who exactly is the lowest ranked player.


So anyway, I read something about what online play is missing over in-person and it got me thinking: what if there was a tag that trailed after usernames in the game hall (similar to the admin tags) for accounts that are under a year old? Or if they appeared in the user list italicized? Anything to mark them as "new to Gemp, perhaps LotR TCG entirely." This way if there is an option to play ranked vs casual, it's easy to give new players a pass for bringing the "wrong" deck to casual or pressure old players into bringing the "right" decks. As long as the pressure is appropriately applied it can emulate the sort of card shop experience so many say Gemp lacks, although the tricky part is to identify whether there's unhealthy pressure on players (and to correct it even if it is identified). There will probably have to be some give and take from both competitive-minded players and casual ones before anything can settle into something productive, and that's unfortunate. Creating a good in-person play experience probably worked the same way though, right?

As far as making it happen, the first thing to do is mark new users. This requires the least work to enact, and it should probably be months before there's any other change so that everyone can get used to the concept (and ensure that no harm comes from it). After that, introduce a checkbox or something for casual tables to mark it as "competitive." The most important thing for this step is that the difference between competitive and casual is nothing. No ELO or ranking or points, no reward for winning or playing, just a different name for the same thing. This will let us see whether the community can support both groups independently, and remove any incentive for a player to test their competitive decks out in casual first. Eventually some form of ELO can come to constructed leagues and tournaments while "competitive" remains untouched. All of that goes well, eventually eventually "competitive" can be renamed "ranked" and keep track of wins and losses somehow. No rewards though -- keep those to leagues and tournaments.

Framing it all this way provides more places to bail if it turns out to be a bad idea (either for the moment or forever) and offers some leverage against my fears. I think I was the minority in being opposed to such an idea anyway. Thoughts on this, and especially the first proposed step of putting a bulls-eye on every new player's back?
« Last Edit: December 29, 2021, 10:17:29 AM by Phallen Cassidy »

February 07, 2022, 04:39:04 PM
Reply #1

5tein

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Re: Potential Value in Marking Tables as Competitive vs Casual
« Reply #1 on: February 07, 2022, 04:39:04 PM »
Personally I'd prefer the idea of simply naming / labeling tables. That's a solution that could address "casual" gaming and "reserved" matchups and even "new player" tables.

P.S. You mentioned discard as one of those decks that isn't/shouldn't be acceptable in casual games. Having played a variety of discard decks throughout the history of this game, I still don't get why discard is considered such an NPE that it's lumped in with more obviously broken cards like GLR. Discard's a NPE for some players, absolutely. But so are a lot of decks, if you're not prepared to counter them. Unless I missed something discard was far from OP, let alone broken (perhaps it was after Hunters, but by then local play was dead so I never saw or tested Dwarven Warrior, Subterranean Homestead, or Gorbag Filthy Rebel). During the first 3 blocks I doubt I ever went better than 4-2 with discard in a tournament -- more often I went 2-4 or 3-3 -- and while I'm not a tier 1 player, I'm no slouch. To beat discard just requires a different -- and frankly, relatively simple -- strategy. This is normal. Choke requires a different strategy. Dunland requires a different strategy. Isengard machines requires a different strategy.

I don't mean to turn this thread into "discard sucks!" but couldn't resist adding my 2c to what you accurately point out as "soft expectations" around casual games. To me, playing an Orc Butchery or Too Much Attention deck can be nothing but casual.

So to bring this full circle, no, I wouldn't bring discard to a "new player" table, but I also won't be offended if you flee my Orc Butchery in a "casual" table ;)