Looking at the poll results right now, I question whether some of the votes are based on the alliance assessment made on the post, which IMO isn't very fair. First off, that assessment is mainly based on arivess's judgment and there hasn't been really discussed in full among the mod team. That doesn't sit right with me at all
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I agree it's true that the assessment is mostly my own judgment, but let me explain.
I wrote the assessment because I'm concerned most members don't really know what's going on and will only be voting by the points, which will be a bit unfair for Thieves, Black Mages, and Soldiers, because the first two had somewhat special circumstances, and the third only had three active members scoring that many points.
This assessment is not the same one I made before all of the points were tallied. I wrote all of this up now, judging by the points we just got, and by what I know of who will be around next game and not. It's just that for the most part, my opinion hasn't really changed regarding the general strengths and weaknesses.
Plus, the mods disagreeing with me aren't most of them, just BMs and Sai. As far as BM assessment goes, it is not my idea, and I wrote down what I thought they were trying to tell me, I just happened to misunderstand, thus the frustration on both sides. And for Thief assessment, Sai and I very much disagree with
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Been talking about this with various people, but hadn't really posted-- but it seems like a good time to.
I am weird about contests.
I just want to get that out of the way-- I do not think in ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM that anything I'm about to say represents ANYONE'S opinion but my own, which is why I haven't really expressed it, but I feel like transparency and discussion seems to be the name of the game, here, and I wanted to get this out there.
Personally, I couldn't possibly care less if the teams are balanced or not, and here's why:
It's a competition. I am a fairly competitive person. I like competitions, and I like to do my best at them. I like strong team unities and working together to overcome obstacles. I like winning, sure, but I also just like the feeling of playing the game. I like the feeling of struggle and the sense of accomplishment, and I don't like handicaps-- being given a handicap takes away from the work that I did to get where I am and being a handicap is insulting. (NOTE: I am not actually angry or
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I think you have a valid point of view, but it works better both in an individual challenge and in a larger group.
I didn't like the two alliances thing either at the start for the same reason, to be honest, but decided to do it because it was the one with the least amount of disagreement in previous alliance discussions on JM, and because with 4 relatively strong teams and 2 relatively weak ones, it was almost impossible to balance them.
I know you say you don't care about balance, and you like competition, but not everyone is going to see it the same way. Some people will like overcoming obstacles, like you, but some other people might just get discouraged and wonder why they should bother trying.
The problem is, it's also unfair to the stronger alliances/teams if it's not balanced. Because then, if they win, it doesn't really mean as much if they were kind of bound to win from the start. You can say you gave them a run for their money, but they'll just know all they did was beat a significantly weaker team. And if the weaker
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I agree that it's my opinion and that I'm a weird one.
But I do challenge the notion that it's any MORE fair to each individual team to balance teams based on how good they do in the previous game/games.
It doesn't honestly bother me much personally, it's just a bit of logic that makes me tilt my head sideways. No one likes to be punished for doing well at something. And equally, most people don't want to feel like they're bringing someone else down.
Again, I may be strange, but I would prefer to play without a handicap, either up or down
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I feel like that pretty well levels the playing field for everyone-- because then every team has a theoretically equal chance of victory, because they have an even(ish) number of active members.
Ari can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one of the issues isn't just "the number of active members" but also the fact that many of our competitions are fanworks-based, and the kind of fanworks people do isn't actually spread evenly across the teams. This might actually be a bigger concern than points (dear god. I mean points. The number of people in a team is obviously a factor in the ability to get that many participants in the first place), because it ups the potential for one alliance to sweep a particular contest simply by virtue of having most of the people who participate. (Example: last icon contest in Game 3? I think almost everyone who participated was a Thief. I'm not saying the winners didn't deserve it, but the sheer numbers mean they can sweep the contest in the first place, where a bigger team with fewer iconists simply
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I wasn't sure how to respond to this post. Yin and I voted together and...all I can really say is that I think the team assessments in this post are accurate as far as the results of Game 3 would lead one to believe. No one can really predict how the teams are truly going to be in future games, as I'm sure no one expected the results that actually happened in Game 3 in general. So, yes, while I can see why there might be some issues from the team mods with the team assessments here, I think the assessments themselves are accurate for the data that has been presented so far. Personally, I don't have an issue with the Alliance proposals, even knowing that things might not be totally accurate based off of Game 3 data, I agree with Ari: the most balanced alliances for 2v2 *are* the ones the post kind of says they are. Just in general, Yin and I both thought that the two proposals that it says are the "most balanced" here ARE the most balanced...so, I don't really feel like it needs to be open for even more mod discussion than it
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Part 2 (since we write too much O_O;)breyzyyinMay 6 2012, 18:11:46 UTC
I find it worrying that there is this thought that the smaller teams can make up a lot of points in MWS...to an extent, that could be true. But, there's also the "burn-out" factor and it isn't necessarily fair to expect other teams to participate in EXTRA activities to make up for the fact that their team isn't as big. As I saw in my point-tallying, Soldiers and Dragoons have been pretty consistent with submitting to MWS in all of the past games. It was only the same couple of people, but they were consistent. With the exception of Soldiers in Game 3 (which, who knows what Game 4 will bring), however, they never really have managed to have the points that that the other teams get in MWS simply because they just don't have as many members submitting to it. MWS relies on a member having free time and the like, so I guess I'm worried that members of the smaller teams might burn out in an attempt to "make up some extra points to stand against the bigger teams
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Um, to clarify, because I know I said that in my own comment as well, and I think I really should state this as the MWS mod: it's not that you guys should be expected to make the difference in MWS, it's that because MWS has no hard cap on numbers, it's pretty much the only community that actually has this kind of... hmm, leeway, so to speak. But it is definitely unfair to expect teams to make up the difference in MWS, and I am honestly personally against MWS being used as a crutch - yes, it will earn your teams points, yes, it's possible to keep your team afloat through MWS points, but any situation where a team feels forced to use MWS to remain on par with people is far from ideal. I really don't want to see Soldiers (because I'm really not sure what to say for WMs, as far as I can tell the WMs adore writing anyway? please correct me if I'm wrong) forced into this kind of situation, because as gil tallier for two games, I've only ever seen the same few people participating, but the participation has always been nothing short of
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I think the WMs post in MWS just because they like writing as well (at least, I know that's the case for Yin, lolz!)...I'm definitely not saying that's what you're saying (I thought your comment was very accurate, actually ♥), but Yin and I have both seen comments where people *have* said "Small teams can post things to MWS to make up." and I, as a mod of one of the smaller teams, do have a problem with that mindset...because I personally think it ignores the reality that that's a lot of pressure to put on the few active members of a small team. I do know I submit a lot to MWS because I want to earn points for my team, but I never felt like I "made up" the points that we missed by just not having too many active members. The way things are set up in MWS, you'd have to submit something worth a lot of points to do that...I'm not an artist, and I can't write super long fics nor post super huge icon posts on a really regular basis. There is no way for me to make up those points...I feel like when I see comments like that, I'm
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Comments 45
First off, that assessment is mainly based on arivess's judgment and there hasn't been really discussed in full among the mod team. That doesn't sit right with me at all ( ... )
Reply
I wrote the assessment because I'm concerned most members don't really know what's going on and will only be voting by the points, which will be a bit unfair for Thieves, Black Mages, and Soldiers, because the first two had somewhat special circumstances, and the third only had three active members scoring that many points.
This assessment is not the same one I made before all of the points were tallied. I wrote all of this up now, judging by the points we just got, and by what I know of who will be around next game and not. It's just that for the most part, my opinion hasn't really changed regarding the general strengths and weaknesses.
Plus, the mods disagreeing with me aren't most of them, just BMs and Sai. As far as BM assessment goes, it is not my idea, and I wrote down what I thought they were trying to tell me, I just happened to misunderstand, thus the frustration on both sides. And for Thief assessment, Sai and I very much disagree with ( ... )
Reply
I am weird about contests.
I just want to get that out of the way-- I do not think in ANY WAY, SHAPE, OR FORM that anything I'm about to say represents ANYONE'S opinion but my own, which is why I haven't really expressed it, but I feel like transparency and discussion seems to be the name of the game, here, and I wanted to get this out there.
Personally, I couldn't possibly care less if the teams are balanced or not, and here's why:
It's a competition. I am a fairly competitive person. I like competitions, and I like to do my best at them. I like strong team unities and working together to overcome obstacles. I like winning, sure, but I also just like the feeling of playing the game. I like the feeling of struggle and the sense of accomplishment, and I don't like handicaps-- being given a handicap takes away from the work that I did to get where I am and being a handicap is insulting. (NOTE: I am not actually angry or ( ... )
Reply
I didn't like the two alliances thing either at the start for the same reason, to be honest, but decided to do it because it was the one with the least amount of disagreement in previous alliance discussions on JM, and because with 4 relatively strong teams and 2 relatively weak ones, it was almost impossible to balance them.
I know you say you don't care about balance, and you like competition, but not everyone is going to see it the same way. Some people will like overcoming obstacles, like you, but some other people might just get discouraged and wonder why they should bother trying.
The problem is, it's also unfair to the stronger alliances/teams if it's not balanced. Because then, if they win, it doesn't really mean as much if they were kind of bound to win from the start. You can say you gave them a run for their money, but they'll just know all they did was beat a significantly weaker team. And if the weaker ( ... )
Reply
But I do challenge the notion that it's any MORE fair to each individual team to balance teams based on how good they do in the previous game/games.
It doesn't honestly bother me much personally, it's just a bit of logic that makes me tilt my head sideways. No one likes to be punished for doing well at something. And equally, most people don't want to feel like they're bringing someone else down.
Again, I may be strange, but I would prefer to play without a handicap, either up or down ( ... )
Reply
Ari can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think one of the issues isn't just "the number of active members" but also the fact that many of our competitions are fanworks-based, and the kind of fanworks people do isn't actually spread evenly across the teams. This might actually be a bigger concern than points (dear god. I mean points. The number of people in a team is obviously a factor in the ability to get that many participants in the first place), because it ups the potential for one alliance to sweep a particular contest simply by virtue of having most of the people who participate. (Example: last icon contest in Game 3? I think almost everyone who participated was a Thief. I'm not saying the winners didn't deserve it, but the sheer numbers mean they can sweep the contest in the first place, where a bigger team with fewer iconists simply ( ... )
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