New Drafting Formula

[Lord Thanatos]

I like the system where HH asks the players to list their selection of A, B, C, or D in order.   Then HH tells us which draft position we have (but only our own draft position).  Then we draft.

Honestly . . .  I have done a bit above average in Warlord contests and believe any of the four options is acceptable.

I forget which draft position has which picks, but HH always sends us this information.

Also, no chivalry bonus is acceptable in Warlord. In Team -- I don't care at all.

[DuPont]

Frankly this sounds like a huge headache to me. I was fine with the way it was being done - to me this is way over-complicated. I can flat out state that I hate the idea.

[Jumpingfist]

That is two of the players that play warlords the most. The cabal has spoken

[Ry Vor]

There are a few things going on here.

1.  We are talking about 3rd Cycle drafts, not 2nd Cycle.  Everyone liked the 2nd Cycle drafts for 2nd Cycle games.  

2.  The attention is on Alliance games.  Warlords isn't even available at this point in 3rd Cycle.  When it is, the four players in a game can do what they like, but meanwhile we need a new method for the Alliance draft which affects 12 players per game and is expected to be a popular format.

3.  If you got your 1st or 2nd choice in an Alliance draft, yes, you are thinking there is no problem.  Not so if you got the least preferred draft position, and probably not for the 3rd choice.

4.  It is almost impossible to get your least favored position, your 4th choice.  It requires all four teams pick the same draft position as their first, second, and third choice.  So everyone picks C as top, then D as second, then B as third, and A as fourth.  So one team will get their fourth choice.  That's the only way.  So if that happens, it is really showing everyone evaluates the draft positions the same, and one is clearly the best, and one is clearly the worst.

5.  It's almost as supposedly unlikely to get the 3rd choice.  All four alliances would have to have the same choice for either the first or second round, and only two of the four draft positions selected in the other round for a team to be forced down to their third choice.  This is what happened in the first Alliance draft.

6.  In the 1st Alliance, the three teams that got their first or second choices have all three kingdoms connected.  The one in the least preferred position does not, even though that was the goal of the draft.

So, we can see clearly with just a single sample that ALL team captains made almost identical selections.  This should be evidence enough that the choices are not balanced.  The choices were for C and second best for D.  Those are not about getting the top pick - they are about having a second round pick early.  This is because there is no clear favorite as a top choice in the first round.  That's a good thing for design, but bad for the old style draft.  No one wants to pick first or second overall, because it means they are picking so late in the second and/or third round.  There also is no way currently to give tiebreakers to the least experienced (on paper, Valhalla) teams.  A team with a player that has never even finished a game could (did) get last choice, and a team with three top 10 players may get their top choice of position, even though all teams picked the same sequence.

The new idea was, for Alliance games (again, four players getting together for Warlords can do it however they want, just tell support who has what) that there would be a bidding process.  My recommendation is that each position be bid, not just the three rounds of the draft.  As long as we just bid on or assign position on three rounds, we have the same problem as above.  But in the new method, we don't have rounds anymore, where each team gets one pick per round.  We draft by bidding for each position, 1 - 11.  So there are a huge number of possibilities, instead of four.

If that's not clear, here's an example.  Alliance Green really wants a particular kingdom and bids 55 diamonds to get the first pick.  Alliance Black is indifferent about the top 3 zones, but wants no lower than 4, and then wants 5 or 6.  So it might bid only 2 diamonds for the first couple picks, then high for #4 and #5.  Alliance Red really wants two specific zones to execute its intended strategy.  It might bid 50 for the 2nd zone, 48 diamonds for the 3rd zone, and hope its 2 remaining is good enough for 11th choice instead of 12th.  There are countless variations. There is no reward for having the last pick.

Because this is 11 rounds instead of 3, the very informal method now of just checking in whenever during the day would instead have the four captains all on line at a set time, and like a sports draft, have a couple minutes to make their bid in that round.  Its awarded to the highest bidder, and on to the next selection.  If three minutes per draft position, and two minutes admin time to award the pick and notify the 4 captains each time, the draft is done in one hour.  Everyone that has participated in a draft seems to enjoy the game within a game process and implications, and immediate strategic reversals from the outcome.  There's no reason to short change the process.  Is someone doesn't care about it, they should have someone else be captain that does. 

I think this is a much more interesting method, levels the playing field, allows more strategy in the draft, and should have everyone have a much better chance of getting what they want instead of being handed the positions no one else wanted. This should be really good for the Alliance games.

[HeadHoncho]

I know you really like the idea of having everyone online at once, but doing that through live bidding over 12 rounds is not workable. You need to hear me on this.

Well, you don't really "need" to, but speaking only for myself, I am not willing to spend that much time on a set schedule to deal with it. Someone else might be willing, but I'm skeptical this is going to be popular with the captains, either.

If you really want 12 rounds then sealed bids in advance for all 12 positions (to clarify, this would be for picking order only, not for the actual Kingdom selections, which would be handled subsequently via e-mail) at the same time is the way to go. If you want less variance, reduce the number of diamonds and eliminate the Chivalry bonus concept.

That is workable, in my view. There needs to be a balance between variance and simplicity.

By the way, the last draft had three people bidding D, one person bidding C. Two people got their first choice, one got their second choice, and one got their third choice. No one got their last choice of bidding order.

EDIT: Sheerly FYI, it's far, far easier for me to spend a few minutes here and there on draft selections and emails, than it is to devote an hour-plus long block of time to anything.

I'm also wondering if this could be fixed simply by tweaking the A, B, C, D draft orders.

EDIT 2: Such as:

A: 1, 8, 9 (18 points, less is better)
B: 2, 7, 10 (19)
C: 3, 5, 12 (20)
D: 4, 6, 11 (21)

I've been resistant in the past to cluster picks because at pick 10, B will basically know the composition of Team A, but if we're revealing teams, anyway, it shouldn't matter as much. Under this draft scheme, would D still be a top preference? Or would it be better to smooth the points at 19, 19, 20, 20?

EDIT 3: 19, 19, 20, 20 would look like:

A: 1, 8, 10 (19)
B: 2, 6, 11 (19)
C: 3, 5, 12 (20)
D: 4, 7, 9 (20)

[Jumpingfist]

I know when I was selecting my draft position the main thing I looked at was not getting the last pick because in 3rd cycle it is now basically zones. With last pick you have no control of keeping your team together. So it was more about positioning than kingdoms but same effect as Rick stated.

That positioning problem did not happen because the last two pick actually connected to the rest of there team. The simple thing that happened in the last draft was someone had a bad drafting strategy. drafting a team not taking into consideration what others would likely do or looking at what kingdoms would be around your first choice. The clear example is taking zone1 with the first pick. With 2 pure Mage positions surrounding zone 1 they were going to be picked up befor the next pick already making the team separated. This was not an issue with drafting order but drafting.

The trouble with a live bidding system is you are actually going to have an even worse set of draft orders when the final results are in. There is an art to bidding and driving up the price to get what you really want that most do not understand. Human nature is to try and win so they over bid early on what may not be the best value. Also everyone meeting for an hour does limit who the captains can be that are choosing the fate of the team.

[Lord Thanatos]

Either of the two edits HH suggested would be acceptable to me.

I say let the team with the least collective total status points select a draft position first on down to last draft position remaining assigned to the team with the greatest total status points.

The players on each team is far more important than which positions each time pilots. Status points is a fair method of allocating team selections of draft positions.

This method might even encourage adding players with few status points to otherwise very experienced teams.

[HeadHoncho]

I think that's a good idea, LT.

[Jumpingfist]

i hope you are talking about warlords status points and not single player status points. There are players that play mostly only warlords that would get early picks all the time since they do not accumulate single player status points.

Another issue is using myself as an example I have so many 2nd cycle status points that even if I pick two brand players we would still pick last. That does not match the actual team make up. (When do we start using 3rd cycle stats)

Another issue maybe it is just me but I pay the same money to play this game. We are not just playing some free on-line game. I do not like the idea I never get a premium draft spot because I love to play the game more than someone else and am paying the same money. I can think of no paid sport/game where they penalize you for playing more or winning more.

I guess you do get a lower draft pick in spots. But that is not the same here we are not drafting players.

[HeadHoncho]

I think that's a fair rebuttal, JF.