Legendary Inventors (and Ultimate Contest)

[Liallan]

I am sorry if I implied that feelings were a choice or that other opinions or feelings were not valid. I think the choice of words I used was poor. The key point I was trying to convey is that the value of 2nd/3rd/4th varies from person to person and that the way the system values each placement can alter the optimal in-game strategy for boosting one's ELO rating. I didn't mean to say that it was a conscience or mutable choice an individual makes.

I tend to see it that the system values fit in with how I already feel, rather than me adjusting my playing because of the system. That of course is just me. I tend to see 2nd place as having meaning, especially if I'm only a point or so behind the leader, even more if it was a tie breaker. Since placement seems to affect skill everywhere I go, it seems that this is fitting in with that belief. Every tournament I've ever played has recognized placement at game end, not just the winner. I'm sure there are people who change their playing style to fit the system, but I'm just already like this, and I'm like this without an incentive system.

How a person values 2nd/3rd/4th place can have implications on decision making. For example, if you hate coming in last, you might avoid taking a big risk which could either land you 1st place or last place. Instead, you take a safe move which will almost certainly gain you 2nd place but never 1st place. By harshly punishing players who end up in last place and rewarding second place nearly as much as first place, the ELO system favors those who don't take big risks.

It definitely affects how you play, I don't deny that. I know it affects how I play. As to the system rewarding those who don't take big risks, I think in the end it's up to you to decide how to treat that. After all, that's what risk is, no? If you choose to take the risk, you risk both coming in last place and losing more ELO. I just see it as part of the risk. Whether I take risks or not just depends on the game, the situation, what I think my chances are, etc. But I probably assess the risk differently. That is, for someone who sees it as "win or lose," they'll more likely take that risk than someone like me, who will assess the risk. But it doesn't mean I don't take risks. Legendary Inventors isn't the best example since everything is exposed and risk is based on what others might do, and not only am I not necessarily great at that, but I don't know the game well enough.

In some cases, playing for the best position instead of first place can lead to a form of "king making". If you are convinced another player will win or is out of reach of you, you may help them further increase their score

It's only kingmaking if I'm not convince they could otherwise win. If I'm convinced they will win, how is helping them further kingmaking? I would never do that for the sake of helping them. I would only do that (and yes, I've done it) if I'm convinced they are going to win, in which case, I'm already convinced they're going to be beating everyone else as well. If someone else can catch up, then I'm not convinced they are winning. Perhaps therein lies the confusion. And trust me, if I start manipulating placement, I really am trying to take everyone into consideration, how if affects me against other individuals, and how it affects them against each other. That can be difficult to figure out, and I need to know the game fairly well. (Yes, I'm more prone to screwing this up if I don't know a game well, but I also don't have a habit of taking games from people way above my level, so I'm not hurting them.)

It greatly depends on the game. In some, I'm just playing for me - there are games where trying to hurt other people just sort of gets in your own way. In some games you don't know what's going on until it's over, unless someone is just way seriously ahead/behind. (Egizia comes to mind.) Carcassonne is a great example of a game that's just hard to tell - scores can change drastically very quickly, and there's always a co-op thing that goes on in that game - often you have to help someone else to help yourself. That gets complicated. (Though I think I must get a kick out of trying to figure it out.) Since this conversation started about Legendary Inventors... I'm still trying to just figure the game out, what other people even can do, what they might want to do, what they need... And that's a game where scores can come from too many different places so it's darn difficult (at least for me) to figure out "who is winning."

In a game like Settlers of Catan, this could mean using the "Robber" token to steal from the person in last place instead of the person in first, because you don't think you can't beat them regardless. Game design elements like "The Robber" were intended to slow the leader down so others have a chance to catch up, but when you play for second or third place, it is better to harm the players who are already behind instead of the leader. It is like kicking a person when they are already on the ground just to avoid being in last place yourself.

Bad example. I've only played it once f2f and just a few times long ago online. But that's also a game that ends suddenly and I treat that differently, and I think you're probably making assumptions about how I'd play this. I'm much more likely to be looking at who is about to win, or could get into a position about to win. I don't even think I know how to play for second in a "sudden-death" game like that. I play more to help myself and hurt whoever I can, all the better if it's the person in the lead. Granted, if I know someone is about to win on their next turn, I would do whatever puts me in the best position.

And in general, it's not like I spend a game trying to get second place. Perhaps you are over-exaggerating this. I spend a game trying to win. At what point I might "play for second" depends on the game, how easy/difficult it is to determine who's winning, or at what point you can know you won't win, or that your chances are slim.

I've also noticed that always going after the person in the lead without considering anyone else, has a funny habit of moving up the person in last place because no one is paying attention to them. I have even discovered in some games it's best to remain back and have people ignore me because they're so concerned about the leader. (Havana comes to mind. And even in Carc it's not uncommon for my wins to come from behind - in fact, it makes me nervous to spend the whole game in the lead.)

(And though we may be disagreeing here a bit, I actually do find this an interesting conversation.)

[demiurgsage]

IRL when friends play a boardgame no one tries to get 2nd place. No one remember who came 2nd in the game week before. You may think you played strong and did everything you could do, but you can't count 2nd place as a win, it isn't. I think BGA should reproduce this atmosphere.
I also agree that in most boardgames the game balance was designed with the idea that every player tries to win the game. So "the winner takes all" reward system better fit to the balance and probably give players better play experience.
Even if the admins don't agree with this, they could give players an option to choose reward system.

[braven]

IRL when friends play a boardgame no one tries to get 2nd place. No one remember who came 2nd in the game week before. You may think you played strong and did everything you could do, but you can't count 2nd place as a win, it isn't. I think BGA should reproduce this atmosphere.
I also agree that in most boardgames the game balance was designed with the idea that every player tries to win the game. So "the winner takes all" reward system better fit to the balance and probably give players better play experience.
Even if the admins don't agree with this, they could give players an option to choose reward system.

A winner-take-all system would have it's own sets of problems. If you fall way behind, you might as well help out another player with a lower ELO ranking win so you lose less points from the loss. You might also become very discouraged and feel like the rest of the game doesn't matter since there is nothing you can do to improve your situation. Sometimes, second place really is the most you can hope for and it is nice to have a reason to always play your best. Even though I think the goal of every game should be to try and win and always hinder who you think is ahead of you whenever the opportunity presents itself and doesn't harm your own prospects, I do think some value should be given to "second place" and that it shouldn't be treated identical to last place.

ELO was designed specifically for 2-player games (originally created for master-level Chess back in 1939). Using it with more than 2 players will always result in an imperfect system open to manipulation in subtle ways. It doesn't take into consideration the modern complex interactions between multiple players in modern games. Because of this and other reasons, I think it is best to think of it as a rough approximation of skill that could be off by a hundred points at any given time. It is useful for finding players of similar skill, but I don't think it should be treated as an absolute measurement.

For the reward system, a compromise that finds a middle ground between a winner-take-all and equal distribution would be interesting. Making the ELO "K" factor of the "winner vs everyone" part of the ELO formula higher and leaving the rest unchanged should accomplish this. This will result in the winner being rewarded a little better. Second place would still fair better than third place and third place better than fourth place. The relative difference between those placements would remain unchanged.

--

PS: I am mainly discussing these things because I find these interactions interesting to think about. I really don't think "meta-gaming" or "playing for second" is actually a big problem by any means. On the whole, I think the current system is very good and I would be happy if nothing changed at all. I really am just nit-picking minor things.

[braven]

I've also noticed that always going after the person in the lead without considering anyone else, has a funny habit of moving up the person in last place because no one is paying attention to them. I have even discovered in some games it's best to remain back and have people ignore me because they're so concerned about the leader. (Havana comes to mind. And even in Carc it's not uncommon for my wins to come from behind - in fact, it makes me nervous to spend the whole game in the lead.)

(And though we may be disagreeing here a bit, I actually do find this an interesting conversation.)

I agree, it is often a good idea in games which have a "hurt the leader" mechanic (most games have some kind) to purposefully try and not "look" like you are in the lead. I used to be a top Settlers of Catan player back when "Sea3D" was a popular online implementation. More often than not, the "leader" for most of the game would not end up being the winner. Instead, it was a player who stayed a single point behind the leader who would swoop in and steal away the victory in the end.

One of the keys to winning consistently was to avoid increasing your visible VP point total. Most players would just look at that number (clearly shown on in the game interface) to determine who the "leader" was instead of taking into consideration other less visible factors like board expansion possibilities, number of development cards, ports, and resource production. As a result, I almost never claimed "longest road" or "largest army" unless I was going to win that same turn; I would purposefully hold back. While those increase your score, they do not help you in any other way. Instead, it compels a reaction from your nearest competitor to try and steal away those titles and it becomes their singular focus for the rest of the game. Most often the winner is the player who hoarded development cards the whole game and stayed out of the spotlight. That strategy is even more effective IRL, because you can carefully hide your cards away so players can't even clearly see how many you are currently holding.

I also found that being very friendly to all the other players and making generous trades with them early on helped a lot. It is okay to make generous trades as long as you distribute them equally among all other players. You still benefit the most overall and everyone likes you because you helped them out and are more likely to not harm you later on. All the best players would have made great diplomats.

PS: I really don't care about these things as much as I probably sound like I do. I agree that all the things I have brought up are very minor things that don't really matter much overall. I just like to think about the little things, and really don't put much weight into any of the conclusions I have formed.

[demiurgsage]

A winner-take-all system would have it's own sets of problems...

actually all this stuff was already discussed in other topic
viewtopic.php?f=9&t=10591
And some solutions also were suggested. (as you said good compromise between "Winner takes all" and Elo-based system.)

[Liallan]

IRL when friends play a boardgame no one tries to get 2nd place. No one remember who came 2nd in the game week before. You may think you played strong and did everything you could do, but you can't count 2nd place as a win, it isn't. I think BGA should reproduce this atmosphere.

First, I don't count 2nd place as a win. It's 2nd place. No, I don't see it as "win or don't win," but it doesn't mean I see 2nd as winning. It's 2nd.

Also, you're applying the "when friends play IRL" to everyone. The people i play with aren't necessarily like that. They all think differently. It's not a group-think. I know there are others besides me that are happy to get 2nd place. In fact, we have one lady who nearly always is dead last, and she could probably enjoy herself a lot more if she'd take the win/no-win stance, as then she'd have to lump herself in with everyone else who didn't win and maybe feel better. But she absolutely notices that she's always last, or maybe second to last. But I know others have asked who came in 2nd. So it's not just me paying attention. But it's more a point of interest, since winning is a temporary elation, since most of us don't care that much.

I will grant you that more people see it as "win/didn't win," but not everyone, and I don't think playing live with friends makes any difference to how people feel about it.

[Liallan]

A winner-take-all system would have it's own sets of problems. If you fall way behind, you might as well help out another player with a lower ELO ranking win so you lose less points from the loss.

You lost me there. How do you lose less ELO from a lower ELO person winning? Isn't it just about who "beats" you and not their actual place setting? That is, if I'm 4th place, I lost to 3 people, and I'm not aware that the place settings of those 3 make a different to my ELO change. Of course, it makes a difference to the other players' ELO changes.

You might also become very discouraged and feel like the rest of the game doesn't matter since there is nothing you can do to improve your situation. Sometimes, second place really is the most you can hope for and it is nice to have a reason to always play your best. Even though I think the goal of every game should be to try and win and always hinder who you think is ahead of you whenever the opportunity presents itself and doesn't harm your own prospects, I do think some value should be given to "second place" and that it shouldn't be treated identical to last place.

Yeah, I totally agree on that. If I didn't think I could win, and 2nd didn't have a meaning to me, I wouldn't care so much about how I play. As stated earlier, I spend a game trying to win, but there are those situations when you know you can't, and I still want to do the best I can. That's why 2nd has a meaning to me. Of course I'd rather win. (I think too many people interpret me that I don't try to win.)

As to all that Catan stuff, since I don't really know the game beyond basics, I doubt I could manipulate it that well. I'd probably be the one trying to steal the longest road from you. LOL.

PS: I really don't care about these things as much as I probably sound like I do. I agree that all the things I have brought up are very minor things that don't really matter much overall. I just like to think about the little things, and really don't put much weight into any of the conclusions I have formed.

Well, I agree. Probably my big thing is just when other people want to do things that force me into playing like they do. My problem comes when someone wants BGA to do something specific in order to encourage certain types of play, when maybe I don't want to play that way, and I don't think people should try to force others to play a particular way. It's not important enough to me to start manipulating the system so much and I don't want that dumped on me. I'm not that hard-core of a player, and yet I get how other people screw up a game. But I'm usually not playing with experts so I'm doing nothing to affect or hurt them. Now on Yucata there's some games I'm better at, though I don't know how to relate levels to here... but I figure if I've gotten to a higher level, then obviously I know how to win. (Although oddly, I don't always know why.)

[demiurgsage]

I agree that it isn't principal moment. But I feel that current system also force people to play in some way to get better scores and I didn't think that I like this way.

[braven]

A winner-take-all system would have it's own sets of problems. If you fall way behind, you might as well help out another player with a lower ELO ranking win so you lose less points from the loss.

You lost me there. How do you lose less ELO from a lower ELO person winning? Isn't it just about who "beats" you and not their actual place setting? That is, if I'm 4th place, I lost to 3 people, and I'm not aware that the place settings of those 3 make a different to my ELO change. Of course, it makes a difference to the other players' ELO changes.

The amounts of ELO points gained or lost depends on the size of the difference between each winners' and each losers' ELO rank. The bigger the differences, the more points won/lost. A low ranked player beating a high ranked player would result in a large amount of points exchanged and a high ranked player beating a low ranked player results in very few points exchanged. Equal ranked players exchange an average number of points. I did make a mistake in the quote above: You would want the highest ranked player to win in order to lose the least amount of points in a winner-takes-all format, not the lowest ranked player.

Behind the scenes, the ELO calculation is always performed as a bunch of 1 vs 1 matchups. In a 4 player game, the calculation is done individually between all players multiple times - 6 times in total (that single game is actually considered as 3 different "games" per player). For example, the first place player is considered to have actually won 3 games, one against each of the other players individually. The amount of points gained from each match depends on a comparison of that player's ELO to each of the other player's individual ELO rank.

Likewise, the second place player also had 3 different matches. They won the game against the 3rd and 4th place players, but lost the game against the 1st place player. Usually, they gain points because they still won more than they lost, but it depends on the rank differences; it is possible to lose points still overall. It is even possible for the third place player to gain points even though they lost more "games" than they won as long as the 4th place player had a high ELO rank.

The last place player always loses 3 "games" and wins none, one loss against each of the other players. This makes it 3 times worse than losing in a two-player game (or a winner-take-all hypothetical format)

In a winner-take-all system there are only 3 calculations instead of the 6 calculations illustrated above (the winner against each other player individually, but the other players never compare ranks with each other). These means that the winner's rank is the only one that matters and it is always better for the winner to be the highest ranked player (if you can't win yourself).

[dudi2]

In a winner-take-all system there are only 3 calculations instead of the 12 calculations illustrated above (the winner against each other player individually, but the other players never compare ranks with each other). These means that the winner's rank is the only one that matters and it is always better for the winner to be the highest ranked player (if you can't win yourself).

It's only 6 calculations, not 12.
The 1st against 2nd, 3rd and 4th,
the 2nd against 3rd and 4th, and
the 3rd against the 4th.