Gemp-LotR Leagues - schedule, ideas, results, etc

[hsiale]

All the leagues follow the same pattern: a bit more than one game per day is enough to play all the games (most leagues recently use series of 9 days and 10 games). A 20 games league would last at least 17 days.

The reason of sealed deck cards disappearing is that if they were left to players, everyone would have to join, even if a player does not want to play at all. And having participants who plan not to play is not a good thing. The league costs 50G and even if you play half of the games the prizes are well over this worth, especially now, when each sealed league has 200-300 participants (which drives the overall ranking prizes up). Last TTT league even finishing around 110th place gave 5-6 boosters from overall ranking alone (not counting extra prizes for each win), and to get such place it was enough to play something like 16-18 games at 50% win rate, or 25 games with no wins at all. So, even if you want to play just some of the games, you still are nearly sure to gain more cards on participating than 50G gives you spent on packs. We just didn't want the sign up alone, with no games played at all, have positive value for collection.

First three sealed leagues allowed people to have their cards. Two of them were FotR and one TTT. And this is clearly visible now in card prices - FotR has most cards worthless with best rares priced over the roof, TTT is a bit better but still not great, while King Block prices are really good - best rares are not so expensive but even nearly all commons are worth more than $0.01.

[ramolnar]

The league costs 50G and even if you play half of the games the prizes are well over this worth, especially now, when each sealed league has 200-300 participants (which drives the overall ranking prizes up). Last TTT league even finishing around 110th place gave 5-6 boosters from overall ranking alone (not counting extra prizes for each win), and to get such place it was enough to play something like 16-18 games at 50% win rate, or 25 games with no wins at all. So, even if you want to play just some of the games, you still are nearly sure to gain more cards on participating than 50G gives you spent on packs. We just didn't want the sign up alone, with no games played at all, have positive value for collection.

I disagree. I just won the last two sealed leagues. I have 177 unopened boosters. If I wanted to play in a collectors' league, I would buy the singles for my deck. I wouldn't open cards. Why? There is no pack worth 10 gold, and it's not worth my time to mine gold.

Pack value is based mostly on the rare. I looked tonight, December 20. Of the 121 rares in FotR, only 38 had a buy price of 5 gold or more. Mines of Moria has 12/40. Realms has 12/40. Siege of Gondor was a good set for rares, with 19/40 over 5, and 11/40 at 10 gold or more. In a poor set for rares like Ents of Fangorn, there are only 10/40 above 5 and 4/40 worth 10 or more. To pick a less played set, in Treachery & Deceit only 8/60 rares are over 5 and 4/60 are over 10.
This means that in the best set, only 1/2 the time do I get at least 5 gold from the rare. An average set has 1/3. Some sets are worse. I'll add 1 gold for the commons and uncommons, but that doesn't get me a lot of value from a majority of packs.

One might argue that I should consider mean cost, not the median. I totaled the cost for Realms and Siege, which have good rares overall. For Realms buy cost, I get about 400 gold over 40 cards, an average of 10. Siege of Gondor gets about 340 gold, an average of 8.5. Add one more for uncommons and commons, to make 11 for Realms.
Remember that my sell price is 3/4 of the buy price. Thus, if I'm willing to open Realms packs and go through the very slow sales process, I can get about 8 gold per pack. Whoo hoo. I'd much rather be playing games and having fun.

Given this hassle, a pack won is not worth 10 gold. I'll say 6, but I'm tempted to value it less. At 6 gold, I need to earn 9 packs to make back my entry fee. If I play 25 games and get no wins, 5 packs isn't worth it. But 0-25 is not very realistic. Let's say 18 games at 50% win rate, so 9-9. That means 4 or 5 packs from game wins, plus about 5 from the end of the series. I make a small profit -- if I spend a lot of time with the merchant. That's not nearly sure, and it's not fun.

I know that you, hsiale, and MarcinS are terrified of inflation. But under the current system, everyone's really poor. As I've said, I don't want to play Super Sealed and I don't want to spend hours selling 2 cent commons to get a decent deck together.

[Nitsuj]

If you thought your packs weren't worth much before, get ready to be staring at 30+ Bridge of Kazad Dum in your collection.

Marcin - I understand adjusting the Merchent to not buy cards that it would see no value in, but I'm a little annoyed that some power cards I can no longer get at all unless someone sells a copy to the merchant. 

Now that some cards are hard to get, because the Merchent doesn't have them in stock, it doesn't encourage someone to sell a randomly opened Goblin Armory or Gondorian Bowman, because what are they going to buy with that money?  The other power cards are unavailable, so there is no reason to sell Goblin Armory so you can buy Savageries if the merchent has no savageries to sell.

I'm afraid that this tweak is going to lead to a frozen market.

[MarcinS]

If you thought your packs weren't worth much before, get ready to be staring at 30+ Bridge of Kazad Dum in your collection.

Marcin - I understand adjusting the Merchent to not buy cards that it would see no value in, but I'm a little annoyed that some power cards I can no longer get at all unless someone sells a copy to the merchant. 

Now that some cards are hard to get, because the Merchent doesn't have them in stock, it doesn't encourage someone to sell a randomly opened Goblin Armory or Gondorian Bowman, because what are they going to buy with that money?  The other power cards are unavailable, so there is no reason to sell Goblin Armory so you can buy Savageries if the merchent has no savageries to sell.

I'm afraid that this tweak is going to lead to a frozen market.

I will be tweaking the parameters of the merchant, but I'd rather start with some safe settings, as if a damage is done (market gets flooded) it cannot be undone.

And no, I don't think it will get frozen, as if the "buy" prize for the Goblin Armory reaches some magic number, it will be worth to sell it, and buy boosters, hoping to open couple of good cards. So, it's just a matter of finding proper settings, that will instruct merchant to increase "buy" prize for cards out of stock, fast enough to satisfy singles demand.

[sgtdraino]

I didn't say NOT PLAYING - I said - not joining every league, which is quite different.

Your goal is to encourage participation in the leagues, right? Well, it seems pretty obvious to me that, in order to encourage participation in league play, there needs to be an advantage in league play over casual. As it stands now, there just isn't. If anything, the advantage goes to casual. It is easier and less hassle for people to just stick with casual play and let the gold build up. Why do you care about trying to make casual play economically competitive with league play? Is it your goal to build a fake economy, or is it your goal to build a healthy playing environment? It seems to me that you are overly-focused on the fake economic aspects of this system, which I feel most players don't really give a crap about.

For example, instead of participating in a sealed league (format one might not really enjoy playing), one may choose to spend the gold on singles needed for his/her deck for constructed league to increase his/her chances there. If participating in a league was obligatory,

In your above example, the person in question is still motivated to participate in league play, whether that be sealed or constructed (I think you actually meant collectors). Participation in league play is only "obligatory" if the gold actually matters, and gold is entirely unnecessary for casual play. As it stands now, casual play is still the better bet to get gold "easily," and yet no one actually needs gold in casual play. See the problem?

Idea behind currency is not, to allow everyone participate in everything, as then there is no need for currency, but to provide all players with a valid choice, of how they want to spend their allotted resources (gold and time).

But you're trying to make casual play competitive with league play in terms of earning gold, when gold is useless in the casual play environment. I feel there should be a distinct and obvious gold advantage to playing in leagues and tournaments, and it seems to me that most players currently do not see such an advantage. That seems to be your intent, actually, but it doesn't encourage league participation.

The idea is, that an average player playing majority of his games in a league, will get his investment (joining league fee) in boosters, just from the game win rewards. That should encourage an average player to join the league at all (invest currency), even if one feels he/she might not get enough time to play all games, as well feeling strong enough as a player to win most of games.

We've been through this already. Last time I looked at the numbers, the "average player" was not what you thought it was. They didn't play as much as you thought, and they didn't win as many games as you thought.

I disagree. I just won the last two sealed leagues. I have 177 unopened boosters. If I wanted to play in a collectors' league, I would buy the singles for my deck. I wouldn't open cards. Why? There is no pack worth 10 gold, and it's not worth my time to mine gold.

Bingo. If you're in it for the gold, league play is just not worth the hassle.

I know that you, hsiale, and MarcinS are terrified of inflation. But under the current system, everyone's really poor. As I've said, I don't want to play Super Sealed and I don't want to spend hours selling 2 cent commons to get a decent deck together.

This.

If you thought your packs weren't worth much before, get ready to be staring at 30+ Bridge of Kazad Dum in your collection.

Marcin - I understand adjusting the Merchent to not buy cards that it would see no value in, but I'm a little annoyed that some power cards I can no longer get at all unless someone sells a copy to the merchant.  

Now that some cards are hard to get, because the Merchent doesn't have them in stock, it doesn't encourage someone to sell a randomly opened Goblin Armory or Gondorian Bowman, because what are they going to buy with that money?

Wow. Here again, to me this is highly detrimental to league play, collectors formats, and the gold system. Again, your objective should not be to simulate a realistic economy, your objective should be to create a healthy playing environment. If there are cards that nobody can get regardless of how much gold you have, then ultimately the gold becomes worthless. You're never going to be able to duplicate the real economic structure of lotr, because there is no way for players to trade or sell cards directly to each other. But in that real economic structure, it is still possible to buy any single you want, if you're willing to pay enough to get it. In my view, the merchant should NEVER be out of stock. Astronomically high prices perhaps, but never out of stock.

The other power cards are unavailable, so there is no reason to sell Goblin Armory so you can buy Savageries if the merchent has no savageries to sell.

I'm afraid that this tweak is going to lead to a frozen market.

Yep.

Right now there is no economic incentive to make me want to participate in leagues. Most of the league formats I see available, are not formats I'm interested in playing, so there's no player's incentive for me to participate either. However, I'm very hopeful that hsiale's idea to cycle through formats more quickly, and have single-series leagues, will give me that player's incentive I'm looking for, by having more formats I like to play.

However, there's still no gold incentive to play. From my persective, there is actually a gold incentive to not play in leagues.

[Nitsuj]

And no, I don't think it will get frozen, as if the "buy" prize for the Goblin Armory reaches some magic number, it will be worth to sell it, and buy boosters, hoping to open couple of good cards. So, it's just a matter of finding proper settings, that will instruct merchant to increase "buy" prize for cards out of stock, fast enough to satisfy singles demand.

Disagree, booster packs are more or less worthless.  As the posted posted here, your odds of pulling a good rare vs. a worthless rare are simply not good.  So, selling a Goblin armory and buying like 10 boosters with what you got - you might get lucky and pull another Goblin Armory!  Or you might get lucky and get $10 in total sales back to the merchent.

I would never sell a Goblin Armory and hope to get Gondorian Bowman in random pack pulls.  Instead, i'm going to horde my Goblin Armory and just hope I see more of them through natural prizes from signing up for leagues.

[hsiale]

After some thinking and reading your input, this is the plan for next weeks.

Constructed leagues will be one serie. They will last 11 days and number of games allowed will be 13 per player. Of course overall classification prizes will go down (because you can play 3 leagues in time you played one before). Prize details will be announced soon.

League formats:
- starting 27.12.2012: War of the Ring Standard, Non-Collector's
- starting 07.01.2012: Towers Standard, Non-Collector's
- starting 18.01.2012: Fellowship Block, Collector's
- starting 29.01.2012: Expanded, Non-Collector's
- starting 09.02.2012: Reflections Standard (sets 1-9), Collector's

The reason for a bit of break from Collector's is that I want to give you time to get used to new merchant and whatever tweaks (if any) to it are needed. Afterwards I plan to alternate Collector's and Non-Collector's as before.

[sgtdraino]

Is non-collectors the same thing as constructed?

[hsiale]

Yes. All cards allowed.

Whenever I use name "Constructed" people ask if all cards are allowed, so I decided to try to write it more clear this time

[MarcinS]

To address the last few posts:
1. Old merchant caused the value of cards being too low, compared to boosters. The new merchant should equalize the value of boosters vs the value of cards (thanks to magical thing called - free market rules), so that when you open a booster, on average you should be getting cards worth of 10g "sell" price (merchant will "buy" them for 7g, due to 70% return on investment it expects). No, it will not happen over-night, as introducing a very drastic changes like that, may open it to exploit by players camping merchant, but it will happen within few days.
2. Due to the increase of value of boosters (point 1), playing in a league, while doing "average" should be enough of an incentive to join a league, and there is no need to increase league prizes. The problem was that we have calculated prize payout for "average player" based on booster prices value as compared to the entry cost. When the real booster price plummeted, it broke our calculations.
3. Players who play only "Casual" games, as they either have no time to play enough league games, or don't really care about competitive aspect - do not care about collections or prizes given in league. So, increasing prizes in league, both for each game won, as well as the end of league one, will not make them more willing to play and compete. In fact, there is nothing we can do, to make them willing to participate in organized play (outside of turning off possibility of creating "All cards" games).

[sgtdraino]

3. Players who play only "Casual" games, as they either have no time to play enough league games, or don't really care about competitive aspect - do not care about collections or prizes given in league. So, increasing prizes in league, both for each game won, as well as the end of league one, will not make them more willing to play and compete. In fact, there is nothing we can do, to make them willing to participate in organized play (outside of turning off possibility of creating "All cards" games).

I can't speak for everyone else, but I can speak for myself: I haven't played in a league game for quite a while now, and the reasons I haven't are not any of the reasons you have listed. I do care about collections, prizes, the competitive aspect. Having leagues in formats I like to play would improve my participation, increasing prizes would also improve my participation. Right now, from my perspective, league play is not fun enough (because it's usually formats I don't care for), and it is not lucrative enough (because historically I am lucky to break even on the entry fee). Those are the reasons I don't participate more. Period.

[MarcinS]

and it is not lucrative enough (because historically I am lucky to break even on the entry fee)

If you don't break up even, the problem is either with the value of boosters being too low (which is gonna be fixed), or you don't have enough time to playout all your games, which is unfixable, as pointed in my point 3 ("they either have no time to play enough league games").

[sgtdraino]

If you don't break up even, the problem is either with the value of boosters being too low (which is gonna be fixed), or you don't have enough time to playout all your games, which is unfixable, as pointed in my point 3 ("they either have no time to play enough league games").

Last time I looked at your numbers, the average player does not play enough games to break even. This means that league play is not a good deal for the average player. This is fixable, and perhaps fixing the value of the boosters will correct that.

[janjetina]

After some thinking and reading your input, this is the plan for next weeks.

Constructed leagues will be one serie. They will last 11 days and number of games allowed will be 13 per player. Of course overall classification prizes will go down (because you can play 3 leagues in time you played one before). Prize details will be announced soon.

League formats:
- starting 27.12.2012: War of the Ring Standard, Non-Collector's
- starting 07.01.2012: Towers Standard, Non-Collector's
- starting 18.01.2012: Fellowship Block, Collector's
- starting 29.01.2012: Expanded, Non-Collector's
- starting 09.02.2012: Reflections Standard (sets 1-9), Collector's

The reason for a bit of break from Collector's is that I want to give you time to get used to new merchant and whatever tweaks (if any) to it are needed. Afterwards I plan to alternate Collector's and Non-Collector's as before.

That's nice.

[sgtdraino]

hsiale, I have another suggestion for future league events:

I was on gemp checking out the Server Stats tab, and I looked up the stats month-by-month for the past 4 months, to see what the most popular formats are in casual play. The results are pretty consistent: Fellowship is the most popular, hovering around the 30% range. Movie and Expanded are always roughly tied for second, around the 25% range. Some months Expanded is more popular, some months Movie is more popular... but the point is that those three formats account for around 80% of all the casual games on gemp. Every other format is FAR less popular than those three. Open tends to be the 4th most popular format, with only about 5% of the games per month. After that is Towers, Towers Standard, and Standard, all hovering around the 2-3% range. After those guys, all the other formats are a fraction of 1% popularity.

Where am I going with this? I suggest that you concentrate your league events on those top three formats, the ones that people want to play 80% of the time. More events in those formats, fewer events in the rest. I think that's another way to encourage more participation. One reason why people drop out towards the end of events, might be because they were willing to try a less popular format... but ultimately those less popular formats are just not fun enough for them to keep playing to the end.

Thoughts?