| Feel free to use this thread to post your comments and/or suggestions about MAL's Fantasy Anime League. |
NaruleachSep 26, 2021 7:17 PM
p r o f i l e 👀 |
| Why has FAL always limited the bench to only 1 or 2 titles and 3 swaps for the whole season? I think increasing the bench size and number of allowed swaps would make for more interesting week-to-week decisions. The way it is now, it seems you have no shot of changing your fortune if your initial group underperforms in the early weeks. A bench of 4 and up to one swap per week would give more people a fighting chance. |
| Ideal anime wife? |
| With 4 benched anime, you could cover pretty much every popular anime of any season. Combined with swaps every week, you'd just need to make sure you have the top 5 in every time. Would probably actually make it harder to get anything less than a near perfect score. You could have a bench (also selected at the start) that only becomes active in the last few weeks maybe? And maybe remove the one-time limit for the instant swap? Sounds like this would all just make it harder to manage for the team organising this though. |
| How about a Award for the winner? Like a Card, display picture, signature, or new layout? |
[center] |
VioLink said: We're going to award the top 3 with a banner for extra bragging rights.How about a Award for the winner? Like a Card, display picture, signature, or new layout? |
p r o f i l e 👀 |
| Decreasing the bench time too much defeats the purpose of having benched players and would support just having more active titles and no benches at all. The setup as it is allows for people to choose the perspective titles that may do well while having a few backup titles they can use if necessary. Maybe the bench could be switched to every 2 weeks, but the whole point of Fantasy leagues is speculation and management. Its like poker or stocks, and not everyone will win. |
| Fantasy sports leagues are popular because Joe Shmoe can make meaningful decisions for his favorite teams, managing active and inactive players, trades, free agency, etc every week. 3 weeks (nearly 1/3 of the season) of prohibited activity after a single bench move reduces the decisions one can make. What sense is there to have to wait so long? I don't want to blow up your game if it has worked, but the format hasn't changed since the beginning. No one has thought of something or wanted to try something different to improve the player experience? |
| Ideal anime wife? |
kadian1364 said: Fantasy sports leagues are popular because Joe Shmoe can make meaningful decisions for his favorite teams, managing active and inactive players, trades, free agency, etc every week. 3 weeks (nearly 1/3 of the season) of prohibited activity after a single bench move reduces the decisions one can make. What sense is there to have to wait so long? I don't want to blow up your game if it has worked, but the format hasn't changed since the beginning. No one has thought of something or wanted to try something different to improve the player experience? They already have to wildcard and ace point system to allow people to strategize with their teams more. As far as allowing more versatility and improving the whole experience, its hard to work with an open, non-limited draft of only 60 titles among alot of people. Some people already have the same exact teams, though how they play is entirely up to them. The decision with bench movement could be a deciding factor if they win or not. So maybe shortening the time of bench swapping will allow for a better influence on how well a team does( though we do have a wildcard to allow the player to sacrifice points for the possibly needed bench swap ANYWAYS, What about challenging another team once a week, like a wager match for whomever has a better point total among the two teams or possibly guessing general point ranges of your top three chosen titles. Something like this could add more competition and interaction between users rather than just wildcards as a means to weaken opposing teams. |
CanalDigger said: ANYWAYS, What about challenging another team once a week, like a wager match for whomever has a better point total among the two teams or possibly guessing general point ranges of your top three chosen titles. Something like this could add more competition and interaction between users rather than just wildcards as a means to weaken opposing teams. I like the guessing point range idea if you guess the total point range right or something you get a bonus and if you're way off you get negative points. However the wager between teams is too much. I think with 100+ teams it would be too hard to manage all of those things and make things even harder on the ones that run this thing for us. Plus it would hurt those that weren't socially active which I find unfair. |
| An idea that came to mind related to guessing a point range. Right now FAL is all about speculating the absolute most popular new shows each season, reducing the attention to the top 7-8 shows. Also, the bonus for starting infrequently picked shows is minuscule compared the points earned by a typical popular show. But what if players had to build a team that included middle and low 'tiered' anime? It would better test your perception of popularity across the whole spectrum instead of focusing on the top few. It could work like this: Each player submits a team of 3 High Tier, 2 Mid Tier, and 2 Low Tier shows (and 3(?) bench spots). The High Tier is scored as always, being the most popular shows everyone knows and bringing in the majority of points each week. Mid Tier shows are anime you speculate are in the middle of popularity. They would be point multiplied x1.5, but if one ends in the top 1/3rd that week, it 'busts' and gets 0 points. This dissuades picking all of the very popular shows because you would lose out on Mid Tier points. Low Tier shows would work likewise; point multiplied x2, but bust if they are in the top 2/3rd. Swaps can occur between Tiers or with your Bench, and are limited to 2 or so swaps per week. This way, the anime series have roles you assign them, and less popular shows remain important because of their designated team position and the point multiplier. More players can stay relevant even if they miss on High Tier shows because they might end up having good scoring Mid and Low Tiers. It certainly is a more complex system, but I think people will enjoy the level of control and decision making that comes with it. |
kadian1366Apr 9, 2012 10:11 AM
| Ideal anime wife? |
| @kadian1364 I'm just a first-time FAL participant so perhaps my perception is off, but doesn't that seem like a lot more work for the mods? I don't agree that the bonus for starting infrequently picked shows is miniscule - this is about picking shows that will be popular, so the more popular an infrequently picked show is, the bigger the bonus. That'll show itself more as the weeks progress, I would think. While I can understand the idea you came up with, I find that it makes things overly complicated and being able to make more swaps (while it is understandable in your proposal in order to prevent someone from seriously bombing) seems to take away from the challenge of sticking with a set team for a while. Sometimes simpler is better. |
| Interesting idea would be to allow one roster swap per season where you can change one of your anime to put another in place at the cost of some points and one of your swaps. It could only be accessed like the first 3-4 weeks or so and the top 5 or 10 anime or so couldn't be chosen to get in. It would give those that chose a dud to get back in. That would add the workload for everyone here though so it's just a idea. |
| To be honest, there isn't really anything that can be removed from FAL at the moment considering how little one can actually do. As such, practically every suggestion is going to be more work for the organisers. I'm somewhat against the roster swap simply because the entire point of fantasy leagues is to pick the right team from the start. On the other hand, really liking the tier idea as it puts a LOT more strategy into things. Almost everyone would end up having unique teams as well since it would no longer be as simple as choosing the top 7 anime. At the same time though, the complexity could actually scare people off. We want something that can attract as many members of MAL as possible (the club has only 844 members at the moment, there's no reason that number shouldn't be far higher). |
| But who would divide the tiers and decided on what basis? Wouldn't the tier divider already say pretty much what shows are going to yield a lot of points and which aren't? I think some sort of achievments/bonus would be nice. Something like, for example, if an anime's "Watching" amount changes less than X% form one week to the other, then you get the "Dedicated fanbase" bonus, which gives a 10% bonus for that anime's points (or you could even make the bonus grow, for each week that the number doesn't hange). Or if the amount increases more than say, 30%, then you get the "Explosive comeback" bonus, etc. That'd make choosing more niché shows beneficial, since the amount of watchers for non-popular shows usually doesn't change that much, I think. And also praises those who manage to pick the hidden gems that explode later on. |
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| If the tiers were going to be done, I have to guess that it would be decided beforehand. Like, let's say we have 51 shows. The top 17 are upper tier, 18-34 are middle tier, and 35 and lower are low tier. This would be based on weekly points performance. Compared to the tiers idea, I think the Dedicated Fanbase and Explosive Comeback bonuses could be doable and a lot more interesting without being excessively complicated to work out. Would this be done every single week, or less often? |
| I don't see why it couldn't be done every week. Although I'm just proposing an idea. |
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| You could simply have restrictions on the anime you could put in each tier within your team? As long as the penalty for putting a really popular anime in a low tier in your team is high then everyone will be forced to think about which anime will most likely be unpopular and choose them. This way it's actually more like just entering two or three smaller teams from the beginning, one for a popularity contest and one for an unpopularity contest (and one in the middle), where they all contribute to your one score. The dedicated fanbase and explosive comeback ideas are pretty good, certainly make unpopular shows more worthwhile. Well as it stands, I think we can pretty much say that this is the flaw in FAL at the moment. You HAVE to get THE most popular shows right from week 1 otherwise you may as well accept your loss. |
| Being able to edit your team before registration ends would be nice. While it does make for a bit more work depending on how the process worked out, I think it would be helpful enough to warrant being available. If necessary, there could be a limit on how many times you could edit it in order to keep those compiling the team rosters from getting flooded with excessive changes, like two maximum. |
| Just joining this club to make this post - I won't be a member by the time you are reading this. Though I may rejoin to comment on replies. There have been quite a few people posting about the lack of movement and lots of people at the top having one of just 2 or 3 different team combinations and thus getting the same score every week. How about this for something to make things a bit more interesting: Every week, the team that got the highest unique score that week gets a point bonus of, say, 2500 points. This would provide an incentive for people to try to avoid getting the same team as everyone else right from the start, without actually penalising those who do it. For those with the same team as masses of other people it would encourage tactical use of aces and wildcards to get themselves a different score from the others, which would maintain interest. It would also provide a purpose for the booster wildcard beyond just a one-off bonus for anyone who is paying attention. To prevent the effect of this from getting too big, each player would be limited to only receiving this point bonus once. For example: week 1: player A - 34430 player B - 34430 player C - 33973 player D - 31424 As player A and player B have the same score as each other, player C would get the point boost here, increasing his score to 36473 week 2: player A - 74322 player B - 74322 player C - 73974 player D - 73242 This time player D would get the point boost, increasing his score to 75742, as player C has already got it and so cannot get it again total scores at end of week 2: player C - 110447 player A - 108752 player B - 108752 player D - 107166 The point bonus has enabled player C to get rank 1, boosting him with his unique team over player A and player B who went for the same team. However, the effect isn't all that big - player D, despite also getting the point bonus, was unable to overtake players A and B. Some adjustments to the point reward may be necessary, but you want to be providing incentives for people to go for this without making it crucial to getting a top ranking. Looking at the current ranking figures, 2500 seems to be a reasonable value for this which is why I picked it. But does this put players who have all gone for the optimal team at a disadvantage? Unlike most suggestions to encourage unique teams, no it does not. To demonstrate, look at what happens if player A uses an ace in week 1 for an extra 1k points. In week 1, player A gets the bonus, as well as the 1k points for the ace. Player C does not get the bonus, but instead gets it in week 2. Player D does not get a bonus in either week (but is still able to get it in a later week). scores after first 2 weeks: player A - 112252 player C - 110447 player B - 108752 player D - 104666 Now, player A is in the lead. Note, however, that had player A and player B BOTH successfully used an ace in that first week, neither would have got the bonus, and so player C would have been on top after those two weeks. Hence the tactical element of it. For even more detail of the tactical nature, you only have to look at the impact this would have had on the current FAL season. In week 1, LeopardTheGreat would have got the bonus, with his unique team. In week 2, however, the points would have gone to Dilvish. Yes, that's right - his FAILING an ace gave him the highest unique score for that week. With this system, one would be able to tactically LOSE points, in order to give themself the highest unique score. After all, the 2500 point boost from the highest unique score outweighs any of the losses from ace failure or wildcards. Is that a bad thing? No. After all, it again provides more of a reason to do things that at the moment are basically useless, and it is basically a gamble. If it pays off, you have just boosted your score (although you may have been able to win through a different method later anyway). If it fails, you've just hurt yourself for no reason. It adds a whole new level of strategy, boosts incentives for actually using wildcards which at the moment are largely pointless (especially the extra swap one which would go from basically useless to the least painful of the point-reducer gambles that one could do), and also encourages people to seek out team combinations that not too many other people are using (even if there are multiple people with a team combo, it's easier to get the score boost when there's 2 of you than when there are 10). All that, without being over-powered and without forcing people into weaker teams or teams they don't actually want. Not bad, right? Anyway, that's my idea. Wonder if anyone will actually bother to read it. |
kuuderes_shadowJun 11, 2012 12:37 PM
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
| Some quick suggestions I've thought of: 1. Week 1 swaps shouldn't be allowed. This season, too many players were able to correct their mistakes by a quick swap, thus making the whole purpose of having an initial team pointless. 2. We need more variety. Having a 5+2 team usually allows to cover the most popular shows as long as the player did some research. So it would be nice to change something in this regard. For example, a) As previously suggested by others, increase team or bench size. The former could be better I guess, but I'm not really fond of this idea as a whole. b) Decrease team or bench size. That was done before, and is a better option than the previous one imo. c) Make swaps obligatory. For example, we can have a rule that requires players to swap at least 3 times per season. Perhaps we can even have fixed weeks for that (say, week 4, week 7 and week 10), or that could be done whenever players wish. We can also add another wildcard option that would allow to reduce the number of obligatory swaps to 2. Personally, I like this, since it will require players to put more thoughts into planning. d) A bit crazy suggestion but still: in some sports, the best and the worst results of a participant don't count for the final score. We can have something like this as well (thus, it won't matter how many points the best and the worst show you have on your team scored, only 3 middle ones). This could also work together with the increase of the team size. 3. More things to award points for. For example, an X points for every review of a series that has more votes as "helpful" than "not helpful" by the end of the season. Can't think of anything else at the moment. 4. The length of the game. At the moment, it's 14 weeks, but there's not many series that last for 14 episodes. Most of them end by the week 13 or even 12. So, shortening the game period is something that could be considered as well. |
| I really like the suggestion that kuuderes_shadow made last month (#19 in this post). The massive amount of ties and non-moving spots in the top 20 during the second half of the season is a notable issue, and that suggestion can help not only deal with it, but get people to use their strategic cards (aces, wildcards and swaps). As for seishi-sama's suggestions right above me (#20) . . . + From what I can tell, allowing swaps during week one was a special case for this FAL and normally, the bench swap post is not unlocked until week two. There were probably a lot of first-time players or people who got tripped up by pre-airing dates. The latter seemed to be more of an issue because the initial pre-airing date is what gets listed on MAL, and the official first episode airing date may or may not be shown somewhere in the entry (usually in the More Info section if anywhere at all). + I am up for more variety with a change in bench or team size, so long as it doesn't seriously make the game too easy. Maybe a team of six active series and two bench series. I don't, however, support making swaps 100% obligatory. I feel that they should be encouraged, but that it would be unfair to require them, particularly that many times. I would think that unless someone starts off by chance with the ultimate dream team /or/ they are simply not paying attention to the weekly results posts, that they are likely to make at least one or two swaps during the season. + I am all for finding valid things to award points for. It ought to be something that can easily be automated, though. Can counting the number of reviews with more helpful than not helpful votes be automated or otherwise quickly counted for all the series involved in a FAL season? That I have no idea. Hmmm. I know that in the past, points were awarded for every fansub group that subs a show in English. Maybe that could be brought back. There was also once a bonus for a series being in the top 30 rated series at the end of a given week; I'm not sure whether it would be of any usefulness in a future FAL, though. Very few series would show up even within the top 100, if we look at this past season as an example. + Having FAL last 14 weeks is actually just perfect. Most newly airing series are going to be 12-13 episodes, except for the two-cour-and-up shows and the occasional one-cour show that's 11 or fewer episodes. If you also recall that many shows don't start until the second (or close to the third) week of FAL anyway, and also consider that newly completed shows often get a boom in watching/completed users for at least the next couple weeks, this shows how 14 weeks is a better time frame than say, 12 or 13. Cutting it off before a lot of the one-cour shows finish would effectively prevent these boosts from having some interesting impacts on weekly results that can shake things up a bit. About the only downside I see for picking a shorter series in a 14-week long thing is that once the show finishes airing, in most cases the number of discussion points drops dramatically. |
| Hmm... If you decide to keep two benched series next season and the swap system as it is, then maybe reduce the number of swaps available from 3 to 2, while keeping the wildcard swap. Seriously, who actually needed to use the wildcard to swap this season? Two swaps is enough to get rid of the early frontrunners that drop off in performance later in the season for the later-airing big-hitters, and if there is a popular series with a bad rating or getting a lot of drops at the end which affects the final-week score, you use your wildcard swap to fix that. Note that some of the strongest teams didn't even need to use the third swap, let alone the wildcard one. |
Current FAL Ranking + Previous best::  [ |
| As far as how long FAL runs, it seems fine at the length it's at currently, but I've noticed an issue with air dates affecting points drastically. I might have not understood this correctly, but I was under the assumption that any shows airing in the second week of the game would not have any points for the first week at all. If I'm right, I think that's a big part of the problem with teams being stuck around the same place, and why after the first few weeks, the top players ultimately stayed in the top tier. Adjusting the game so that having a second/third week show on your team didn't penalize you, simply because it aired late, would balance out the game a good bit. I know that FAL couldn't be started late just for those shows, but maybe shows that aired late could get some kind of point boost/modifier, or points could be suspended for the first week, so that teams would still be locked in, but there would be no penalty for late air dates. That adjustment would make the final points for score rankings count more, since the quality of the show and its popularity overall would matter more than that initial first-week point boost. ------------------------------ Just a small suggestion for the FAL club page- Maybe someone could add a link or picture of the season chart for the shows that will be eligible for the current season of FAL, to help people choose teams. That way, they could at least narrow down which shows they wanted to look up based on the synopsis, without having to go over dozens of MAL pages first. ------------------------------ For the wildcards, another way to implement them to make 'em a bit more like wildcards- Wildcards could be used like Aces are currently, but with more of a gamble involved. Players could bet a certain amount of points based on which of the shows in their team would be the best that week (or even where they would rank overall that week, which could get interesting), and, of course, lose that many points if they were wrong, or gain that many if they were right. There would need to be a cap, but the idea is to use a wildcard as a betting chip. I think that this would actually work best very early on in the game, before anyone could really tell how good the anime they're betting on would be. It could even be a suspended gamble, so that it would take effect a few weeks after the bet was placed. Starting with a wildcard gamble on the first week might give weaker teams a better chance later on. If done right, you could play with an underdog team that ends up with the same points as a top tier team. Or, you could have different betting parameters, for instance betting that one of your teams would NOT come in the top ten for that week overall, or something to that effect. Allowing for multiple bets, but with different parameters each time, would be a good way to re-balance the game over time. For example, three different "wildcard" bets, one for whether a show would come in the top ten, fifteen, or twenty, one for which would be the highest that week, and one for which would be the lowest that week for your team. I know it's complicated, and I understand if it's too much to handle. If it's not, however, it would definitely increase competition and club activity. The betting rules could be modified greatly to make things more even over the entirety of the game. ------------------------------------- I'll add some other things later if I think of them, or I might modify this suggestion if I can think of a good formula to use for the first/second/third week points issue. |
DaedalusExNovemJul 10, 2012 6:25 AM
| Thanks for all the suggestions so far. And please continue :) I'll try to answer all of them so far as it is possible at this moment. We haven't discussed anything yet so most of this post is my personal opinion. If you think I'm wrong please correct me or try to change your suggestion so that it will be more useful / that it convinces me/us. kadian1364 said: Why has FAL always limited the bench to only 1 or 2 titles and 3 swaps for the whole season? I think increasing the bench size and number of allowed swaps would make for more interesting week-to-week decisions. The way it is now, it seems you have no shot of changing your fortune if your initial group underperforms in the early weeks. A bench of 4 and up to one swap per week would give more people a fighting chance. Some people already said it, with a larger bench it is more likely that more players have the "perfect team", especially when they can swap more often. A limited team size gives more diversity in all teams and with less swaps you have to be more careful what and when you want to swap. Someone also suggested to reduce the number of swaps back to 2 (as it was in at least FAL Spring 2010). In the previous seasons it was allowed to swap in consecutive weeks (but the number of swaps was only 2). Maybe some of the people who played in those games can say how they found the restriction in this season. Razer said: You could have a bench (also selected at the start) that only becomes active in the last few weeks maybe? How exactly would this make the game better? If you choose crappy series for this bench it's pretty much useless. But maybe I missed the important point. CanalDigger said: What about challenging another team once a week, like a wager match for whomever has a better point total among the two teams or possibly guessing general point ranges of your top three chosen titles. Can you give more details? I'm not sure about guessing points. Some people calculate them exactly for their team so it's not really guessing anymore. Except I misunderstood your concept. kadian1364 said: But what if players had to build a team that included middle and low 'tiered' anime? And how would you decide on the different tiers? It's not that easy to divide series before FAL starts. Or would this be determined week by week depending on the weekly points performances of the series? kadian1364 said: It certainly is a more complex system, but I think people will enjoy the level of control and decision making that comes with it. I think for many people even the current system is complex enough. I agree and can understand that some would enjoy more decision making but it would be sad if we lose many other people just because the rules and everything is getting more complex. FAL should be accessible for a large userbase considering the fact that it's an official MAL game. jakeisquite said: Interesting idea would be to allow one roster swap per season where you can change one of your anime to put another in place at the cost of some points and one of your swaps. We have already thought of something similar. But since we probably want to restrict the teams so that we won't have too many duplicates I'm not sure if this could still work. And you would have to pay a high price for a complete swap which is probably not possible in the beginning since you don't get so many points there. I also agree with Razer: Razer said: I'm somewhat against the roster swap simply because the entire point of fantasy leagues is to pick the right team from the start. Nachotee said: if an anime's "Watching" amount changes less than X% form one week to the other, then you get the "Dedicated fanbase" bonus, which gives a 10% bonus for that anime's points (or you could even make the bonus grow, for each week that the number doesn't hange). Or if the amount increases more than say, 30%, then you get the "Explosive comeback" bonus, etc. This is definitely interesting. I'll have a look into the data to see if it's true that non-popular series have higher watching amount increases. Generally I like such bonus ideas, especially if they can boost non-popular series, so if anyone has more ideas, please suggest them. Numi said: Being able to edit your team before registration ends would be nice. We will change some things in the registration process and this will most probably be possible next time. kuuderes_shadow said: Every week, the team that got the highest unique score that week gets a point bonus of, say, 2500 points. Interesting idea. My idea was to restrict the team distribution anyway next time but this might also help. I can't say much about it at the moment but I will think about it a bit more / we will discuss it. seishi-sama said: 1. Week 1 swaps shouldn't be allowed. This season, too many players were able to correct their mistakes by a quick swap, thus making the whole purpose of having an initial team pointless. This was an exception this time, I don't think we will allow it again. seishi-sama said: 2. We need more variety. a) see above b) we will discuss it c) I don't think we should force it, at least not in fixed weeks. Also, people have to do swaps actively by making a post in the swap thread. Some people never swap and I can't see how I can force everyone to do this. And making random swaps if they don't do it wouldn't be so nice I guess. seishi-sama said: 3. More things to award points for. For example, an X points for every review of a series that has more votes as "helpful" than "not helpful" by the end of the season. Using reviews sounds interesting. I checked the reviews of some series but most reviews don't fulfill the requirements you suggested (more helpful than not helpful). So we'd need another reasonable forumula for this, maybe someone can think of something. seishi-sama said: 4. The length of the game. My opinion on this was: "I don't think we should make it shorter than 14 weeks (some series run 12/13 weeks and this can change some things in the last week)" Series that end before the end of FAL can get a nice boost because more users are starting to watch them (but can also lose points because there are no new episode discussion threads, only the old ones). Also, not every series starts in the first week of FAL but some weeks later. Numi said: Can counting the number of reviews with more helpful than not helpful votes be automated or otherwise quickly counted for all the series involved in a FAL season? That's no problem. Numi said: I know that in the past, points were awarded for every fansub group that subs a show in English. Maybe that could be brought back. I've already thought of that. It's nothing that we can do for every week as done before because then we would again need much time to check/count stuff manually every time but it might be possible in certain weeks. Our goal is still to keep things as simple as possible and to avoid long counting sessions. Numi said: There was also once a bonus for a series being in the top 30 rated series at the end of a given week Isn't this similar to just use points for scores? Oh well, you answered a lot of things I also wrote for seishi-sama... maybe I should have read your post first, could have saved me some time :3 FOEbulous-max said: If you decide to keep two benched series next season and the swap system as it is, then maybe reduce the number of swaps available from 3 to 2, while keeping the wildcard swap. Seriously, who actually needed to use the wildcard to swap this season? Two swaps is enough to get rid of the early frontrunners that drop off in performance later in the season for the later-airing big-hitters, and if there is a popular series with a bad rating or getting a lot of drops at the end which affects the final-week score, you use your wildcard swap to fix that. Note that some of the strongest teams didn't even need to use the third swap, let alone the wildcard one. True, at least for this season. Maybe you will need more swaps next time depending on what we are changing. But we'll definitely think about the number of swaps. DaedalusExNovem said: I might have not understood this correctly, but I was under the assumption that any shows airing in the second week of the game would not have any points for the first week at all. Depends. If they really only start in the second week they shouldn't have points unless some people lie and just set the series as watching. Some of the series have a pre-airing episode though so they can get legit points. But since it's possible to set a series as "completed" even though it's still airing, I guess I'll have to add some restrictions anyway. DaedalusExNovem said: Adjusting the game so that having a second/third week show on your team didn't penalize you, simply because it aired late, would balance out the game a good bit. I know that FAL couldn't be started late just for those shows, but maybe shows that aired late could get some kind of point boost/modifier, or points could be suspended for the first week, so that teams would still be locked in, but there would be no penalty for late air dates. For example Hyouka: It started very late but was one of the most popular shows and gave you more points than some other shows that started earlier. That's all part of the strategy to decide if you want to take the risk to take a show that only starts later or not. That's also one reason why we have the bench. One problem with this whole thing this time was that many people didn't know about the pre-airing episodes and thought they would really start on this date. I think this problem wasn't so urgent in previous seasons because there were less series with pre-airing episodes (correct me if I'm wrong). Sure, MAL is misleading with the airing date a bit and I can understand why people are frustrated when they learn after the registration that it's not the correct date but on the other hand when doing research you should always use several sources, especially when not much is known about something. So people hopefully learned something from this season. DaedalusExNovem said: Just a small suggestion for the FAL club page- Maybe someone could add a link or picture of the season chart for the shows that will be eligible for the current season of FAL, to help people choose teams. I'm not sure if it's a good idea to suggest people to narrow down their choices based on the synopsis. Sure, it's a nice overview but there are other sources as well. So either we'll add more or nothing I guess. I'll think about it. DaedalusExNovem said: Players could bet a certain amount of points based on which of the shows in their team would be the best that week See above ("guessing points") And if I understood it correctly it's just like an ace but not with a fixed point boost/loss but with betting points? We will probably have to correct the points for aces anyway, this also sounds interesting. About the complexity... also see above. Although this doesn't sound that complex at least if it's done in just a simple way. I'm not sure if I addressed everything, if you think I missed some important point, please just tell me. |
LunaJul 10, 2012 1:02 PM
 |
Luna_ said: seishi-sama said: 3. More things to award points for. For example, an X points for every review of a series that has more votes as "helpful" than "not helpful" by the end of the season. Using reviews sounds interesting. I checked the reviews of some series but most reviews don't fulfill the requirements you suggested (more helpful than not helpful). So we'd need another reasonable forumula for this, maybe someone can think of something. Maybe a set amount of points for reach review with at least X helpful votes? Luna_ said: Numi said: There was also once a bonus for a series being in the top 30 rated series at the end of a given week Isn't this similar to just use points for scores? Oh well, you answered a lot of things I also wrote for seishi-sama... maybe I should have read your post first, could have saved me some time :3 You're welcome. And it's not that I thought that bonus would be at all useful if brought back, I was merely mentioning it in case it would give others ideas of what has been done before. Not everyone (especially newer players) will have gone looking at old FALs to see what they were like. I had entertained the thought of giving points based on the rating score more often, like three or four times instead of twice. However, I will be the first to admit that trying to determine in a fair manner how to space those out/which weeks to award those points is tricky, so it wouldn't surprise me at all if this suggestion were to be disregarded for being too clunky to work with. Thought I would mention it anyway. Luna_ said: FOEbulous-max said: If you decide to keep two benched series next season and the swap system as it is, then maybe reduce the number of swaps available from 3 to 2, while keeping the wildcard swap. Seriously, who actually needed to use the wildcard to swap this season? Two swaps is enough to get rid of the early frontrunners that drop off in performance later in the season for the later-airing big-hitters, and if there is a popular series with a bad rating or getting a lot of drops at the end which affects the final-week score, you use your wildcard swap to fix that. Note that some of the strongest teams didn't even need to use the third swap, let alone the wildcard one. True, at least for this season. Maybe you will need more swaps next time depending on what we are changing. But we'll definitely think about the number of swaps. Just food for thought: eleven people did use three or more swaps this FAL. That may only be 5.4% of the players, but I'd say that's still significant, and the number could rise in the future. |
| Just a suggestion to change how bench swap works, sort of like an advanced swap. Feedback is welcome. |
They see me trollin', they hatin'. |
| Some more thoughts regarding swaps since my idea of "forced" swaps wasn't well received: Reducing the swap number to 2 is a good idea, but to make things just a bit more difficult, how about a "no swap back" rule? i.e, if you swap a series out, it's technically out of play and you can't swap it back in anymore. This will negate the extra swap wildcard of course, but it could be replaced with a different wildcard that would allow swapping one series back, for example. |
| I still do not really get what anyone would get out of the wildcard swap if it can only be used after week 9? By then you had enough time to swap in both your bench series regularly and if you need to even one back out again. But with rules like no swap in week 1 it shouldn't be possible to swap out a better series anyway if you don't screw up very badly. What I'm saying is, every other wildcard has it's use in the last week(s) and can heavily influence the outcome, even bringing in luck to the equation. But paying points for an additional swap after week 9 is totally useless unless you have already screwed up so massively that it won't matter anyway. However if the extra swap could be used earlier it would become an important strategic tool and you would already have to think about if you profit more from an early swap or a late nuke and stuff like that. Just wanting to put it out there unless someone can make me believe that a wildcard swap after week 9 can be a valueable strategic tool for the win. |
| I probably regret this post by now. |
| As someone who used one, an extra swap could come in extra handy in the last couple weeks if say a series on the bench would earn a major difference in points due to the extra elements that earn points (i.e. elements other than watchers). Some people plan ahead a few weeks. That was more relevant to Spring 2012 where there were fewer extra elements that would sway point accumulation and it was easier to predict point amounts for a given week weeks ahead. Even so, I think it'll take actually seeing how Fall 2012 progresses to determine whether an extra swap is still handy. |
| Since we have fansub and license points back, the extra swap is indeed very useful now. |
| How about on the final week, the anime on your bench also count? That should include an even bigger shake up amongst tiers that have been tied the entire way through |
The Cart Driver <-- My awesome anime blog |
| I've been looking at the performance of anime in past FAL seasons, and I have a few suggestions in how to update some of the bonus scoring methods in future seasons. In the early years of FAL, MAL was just starting up and had a much smaller userbase. The total viewers of most airing shows rarely eclipsed 10,000 viewers at the end of the FAL season, and the most popular ones only had an outside chance of hitting 20,000 viewers. Today, there are currently 13 titles each with over 18,000 viewers, and Tonari will likely eclipse 40,000 by the end of the season. That suggests a growth of more than twice the number of regular MAL users compared to 3 years ago. The FAL rules are clever in that most of the bonus points scale appropriately with the increased user base. Watching, dropped, forum posts, and even favorites have their points linked to the number of users. However, ratings, aces, and most wildcard options remain scaled to the numbers of 2009, and have very little impact in comparison to the other metrics measured, and certainly does not affect player rankings as much as they did a few years ago. I propose increasing the value of these bonus points thusly: - In general, average ratings fall between the range of 6.5 - 8.5. Multiplied by 1000 in weeks 7 and 10 and by 2000 in week 14, the maximum difference a highly rated anime will score over a low rated one is 2000 or 4000 in their respective weeks. 2000 points also equals 80 forum posts. Popular shows currently record 300-500 posts every other week. So forums are worth 4-5 times more than the less counted ratings, when they should at least be scored comparably in measuring popularity, which is what FAL is about. Therefore to balance this discrepancy, ratings should be multiplied about 5 times what they are currently; times 5000 mid-season and times 10,000 in the final week. - By similar logic, Aces should be upscaled in worth, possibly to 3000 points. - One time use wildcards should be scaled to have greater impact. Nukes could be worth -5000 on targets and cost 1000 to use. - The boost can be worth 3000 points. - Finally, the extra swap can cost 1000 points to use. The adjustments I propose do not change the fundamental way FAL has been played, but simply appropriately scale some bonus points that are woefully undervalued in the current environment. You don’t have to use my exact numbers, but please consider these suggestions to maintain the value of ratings and wildcards. |
kadian1366Dec 23, 2012 12:11 PM
| Ideal anime wife? |
| Another value I’ve been studying is the impact of the multipier bonus for including an uncommonly used title on one’s team. The current rule is that if 4 or less players have a title on their active teams, its viewing numbers receive a 2 times multiplier. The logic is to reward players for gambling on less popular titles rather than to strictly go by chalk every time, no? Since Spring ’09, no title that regularly received the multiplier bonus has ranked higher than 15th in overall points. Medaka Box 2 this season could rank 14th. For those playing for the top spots, these titles don’t matter at all, which is a shame because it promotes less risk taking. I suggest one change to this rule: The threshold for the multiplier bonus is too low at 4 active teams. Change the threshold to a percentage of the total players, such as 5%. 5% of the current 199 players rounds to 10, so titles on 10 or less active teams would get the bonus if the rule were implemented this season. This does three things: 1) It slightly expands the list of titles that get the bonus to include middle-of-the-pack shows, elevating them to FAL relevance. If 5% were made this season, series like Onii-chan Dakedo and Kamisama Hajimemashita would occasionally get the bonus (depending on player moves), shaking up the usually static top 10 every week. 2) Because the reward is large enough to affect the top ranks, many players will begin to risk choosing less popular shows. This creates a greater variety of teams and a more complex, involved amount of decisions for everyone, even late in the season. 3) Finally, scaling the threshold to match the size of the player base makes the rule future proof, no matter how large (or small) FAL gets. I enjoy FAL, and I hope it will continue to be fun in seasons to come. Thanks for listening, and thanks for running a tight ship, guys. |
kadian1366Dec 23, 2012 12:14 PM
| Ideal anime wife? |
| A point brought up in the closing weeks of this FAL season is how the multiplier bonus for shows on 4 or less active teams handles "watching" and "completed" totals differently. I'll simply restate: Why are "watching" and "completed" counted differently for the multiplier bonus? For example, Busou Shinki aired its final episode so there are a few hundred users who have completed the show. Yet only the watching total is multiplied. Doesn't this punish titles that finish early? As it stands, FAL has no other distinctions between the watching and completed status. Thus they should both be counted for the multiplier bonus as well. |
| Ideal anime wife? |
| Thanks everyone for the new comments and suggestions! We have discussed these things for the Spring 2013 season: kuuderes_shadow said: Every week, the team that got the highest unique score that week gets a point bonus of, say, 2500 points. This will be implemented. Since we're going to increase some other points too, the bonus will be 4000 points. This will hopefully bring more variety into the teams. Leinel said: Just a suggestion to change how bench swap works, sort of like an advanced swap. [...] In this case, we are able to self-calculate the points we may gain from our team at the last hour before the week is ended so that we can make a swap that benefits our team, right? [...] My suggestion is our swap will instead take effect the week AFTER the next FAL points are counted. [...] You could say that changing it so that swaps take effect one week later increases the strategical aspect of FAL, but on the other hand it's also more like a gamble, especially now that you get more points for different things and some of them (like fansub group points) might be harder to predict. We won't implement any changes concerning swaps for the next season (because there will be many other changes), but I'd like to hear from some other players what they think about this suggestion and if it’s (still) worth doing this. seishi-sama said: Reducing the swap number to 2 is a good idea, but to make things just a bit more difficult, how about a "no swap back" rule? We think that 3 swaps is better because now we have more points for different things in different weeks. Being able to swap more often can lead to more changes in the rankings while teams might not change so much with fewer swaps. Not being able to swap back series might also just result in more fixed teams. As said above, we won't change the swaps for this season, but if other people think this is a good idea we'll think about it again for the fall season. Higashi_no_Kaze said: I still do not really get what anyone would get out of the wildcard swap if it can only be used after week 9? For FAL Spring 2012 it was indeed a bit useless but as Numi and seishi-sama said, now it should be very useful. Making it available in earlier weeks might be interesting too. But as already said, no swap changes for the next season, maybe for the fall season. 5camp said: How about on the final week, the anime on your bench also count? That should include an even bigger shake up amongst tiers that have been tied the entire way through We think that this will lead to less variety in the teams. If every series counts in the last week, people will probably only choose the most promising series while at the moment you can add series where you hope they will be better but if they fail you can just get rid of them. What do other players think of it? @kenyaboi1364: First of all, thanks a lot for all these suggestions! We wanted to change many points anyway and your observations and suggestions helped us a lot. We will change everything you proposed; mostly with the numbers you suggested, some will have different points though. More information in the rules thread that will be posted soon. So these things will be changed: - Increasing points for scores/ratings - Increasing points for aces and all wildcards - Increasing the threshold for the multiplier bonus from 4 teams to 5% of all teams - Giving multiplier bonus not only for "watching" but also for "completed" Again, thanks for all the suggestions. If we missed something then sorry -- please suggest it again so we can consider it for the fall season. |
|
| The tweaks you folks have implemented this season have worked well, especially the double viewers bonus, with a host of titles benefiting just outside the top 10 in overall points. I have a few more suggestions for minor adjustments for FAL moving forward. - Favorites are counted only once, at the end of the season. I consider it as valuable a measure of popularity as any since users can only have 5 favorite anime titles, making them relatively more rare and harder to "earn". But in comparison to points accumulated from Dropped, Ratings, or Forum posts, the points from Favorites are typically minuscule. Since Favorites are the most static statistic measured, I recommend continuing to count it once, but increasing their value (75 per). - One of the complaints I hear about FAL is that there isn't much in the way of player activity until Wildcards become available in week 9. By that time, many players lose interest and stop making adjustments. To maintain interest throughout the season, I think expanding Wildcards would benefit FAL. Perhaps there can be 2 short Wildcard periods, or multiple uses from a greater array of choices. There can be different Wildcards early and late in the season, and/or they could be deployed on a use-it-or-lose-it basis. It's up to you guys to decide what approach you think will keep players engaged. - A new Wildcard option could be to ignore the Dropped count of one title during one of the weeks they are scored; basically to negate the Dropped subtraction. Some users may find it very useful, while other may benefit more using a different Wildcard. - Another new Wildcard could be a boost equal to the difference in points between you and the next place up. Again, it's variable based on the situation of the individual player, but can potentially be very dynamic. - This last point is a policy suggestion rather than a rule tweak. I tracked OreImo 2 in addition to the other titles, and according to my numbers it would have scored ~608,000 total points, good for 5th overall this Spring season. That's on the cusp of what I consider ban worthy for the purposes of this game, and the threshold of surefire top 5 popularity keeps on escalating as the MAL user base continues to grow. It's just something to keep in mind the next time a sequel of a popular title comes up again. Thanks for listening. |
| Ideal anime wife? |
| Use Plan to Watch scores from off the bench if anything. It creates the fitting symmetry of Watching score : Starters :: Plan to Watch score : Bench. But realistically, if you wanted to implement PtW numbers into the game as joinedforFal suggested, it would influence too many players to create mostly similar teams from the preseason figures. If you wanted to count that stat, score it near or at the end of the season where PtW is less predictable, not at the beginning. |
| Ideal anime wife? |
| All right, I got some suggestions. Firstly, get rid of the fansub points. The reason fansub points were included originally was because it used to be a good indicator of hype and popularity. K-ON would get 20 sub groups while Shin Mazinger Z would get only one group. Nowadays though with almost everything simulcasted, it’s rendered a little meaningless. Let alone differentiating between groups using their own subs and copying Crunchyrolls, it creates this bizarre situation where the anime that doesn’t get simulcasted end up benefiting because more groups are scrambling for it. It’s confusing and outdated and should be scrapped. My second, and more daring suggestion, is to only count watching points every other week. At the moment watching points makes basically every other points tally irrelevant. It might move up or down one spot, but it reduces variability. If you want more variance, count them every other week. It would still be the most important way of getting points, but it won’t dominate like it does now. Some new methods of getting points now. To move with the times, let’s count twitter discussion. Every season each anime has an official hashtag nowadays. Using a site like Topsy, you can see how often a specific hashtag has been used. The number is usually >10k for every 30 days, so I say every 4 weeks in FAL an anime could be awarded hashtag-use divided by 10. For example Meganebu has 27K uses in 30 days at the moment, so that’s 2,700 points. What's cool about this is it tracks what Japanese anime fans think, which is a pretty new metric. Another idea for points would be bloggers. In the past FAL used AnimeNano tag cloud but that became unreliable and was dropped. Now though you could use the Anime Power Rankings. It collects what 100+ bloggers thought of anime on a weekly basis and presents it into easy-to-use data. Count points every 3 weeks, 2000 points for each appearance in the top 5 and 500 points for an on-the-cusp appearance. ::edit:: ah never mind, anime power rankings are being retired at the end of the year. Nuts to this idea. What I'm trying to do with these suggestions is introduce very simple to understand and easy to implement ideas which also offers some more diversity to FAL. |
5campJan 3, 2014 3:37 PM
| The Cart Driver <-- My awesome anime blog |
| I really like 5camp's idea of only counting watching points every other week, like we do with discussion points already. That could help keep a single anime from leading every single week, like Log Horizon did this season, for example. The twitter thing is also pretty interesting. |
 |
| I got a Suggestion how about counting how many voted in the Poll after every episode discussion that would add more ways for a Series to get points just for that week and not counting it anymore when another episode gets released. I also like the Idea of 5camp in the Twitter hashtag count |
| I'd like to propose a change to the way simulcasts are counted: At present, it is done on a per-licensor basis. But does this really make sense? Would it not be better to do based on how many people have access to a series? After all, at the end of the day that's the thing that matters. The present system is very much advantageous towards Aniplex series, which are the only ones aired on Aniplex USA, and are also routinely aired on crunchyroll, daisuki and animax UK. Under the current system, Sekai Seifuku and Nisekoi would be the two biggest benefactors out of the current season, both being streamed on all four of the above. Yet neither are available to large parts of the world, including Australia, which is a major english-speaking territory. Meanwhile a series like Saki: Zenkoku-hen, which Crunchyroll is simulcasting to the entire world (except Japan) gets only one streaming service worth of points. My proposition is to correct this by assigning points based on regional availability of the series. However, it isn't really practical to use a system whereby every single country is awarded points. As FAL uses english language simulcasts, though, it would make sense to use English speaking countries as the measures. These can be changed as you will, but my proposal would be to allocate 1000 points each to the USA, Canada, UK and Australia. Thus examples from the current season: Saki, Space Dandy, Chuu2koi Ren, Buddy Complex, Nobunagun etc. - available to all 4, so 4000 points Sekai Seifuku, Nisekoi - available in 3 of 4 territories, so 3000 points. D-Frag, Nourin, Noragami, Sakura Trick, Mikakunin - available in 2 of 4 territories 1 out of 4 would be rare, in large part because Viz (who, in only streaming to the US and not Canada, would be the main proponents of this) own a large stake in AnimaxUK (and used to in AoD) and thus can be expected to sublicense these series for UK viewers, but one example would be in Summer last year with Blood Lad. This would keep the points from simulcasts to a similar range to the current system, while allocating them in a more sensible manner. If you wanted to increase the points, this could be done either by simply increasing the points per country, or by adding in more nations to represent common license regions (eg. you could have Sweden for Scandinavia, or Brazil for Latin America etc.) |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
| If you did that then you would have to increase the simulcast points to the extent that points from fansubbers are a sort of consolation prize - in other words a series with 1 simulcaster and half a dozen fansubbers should get more points from the simulcaster than it would have done from all those fansubbers. Otherwise a series getting simulcasted would come to be something that actively reduces the points from an anime, which is just silly |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
| Reading the discussions about nukes being useless, and combining that with my own personal thought that they should be more strategy-based, I came up with some possible ideas. I'm more posting these for discussion than anything else. 1) Change the nuke amount from an absolute figure to a % of the person's gain for that week. For example, the nuke could lose the user 1% of the score they would gain for that week (in a watching points only week this would be about 2k points during the current season), and take off 4% of the target's score for that week. This would mean that it is more effective to use the nuke on a week when your own team is getting a low score and the person you are targetting is getting a high score than the other way around - and a hit in a big point week does more damage to your target, but also more damage to yourself. If you want to keep the reduction that currently exists, it could be (for instance) 4% in weeks 9-12, 3.5% in week 13 and 3% in week 14. A couple of added bonuses to this is that it automatically scales with the amount of points that are being gained in that season, and it removes the current situation where in the final week you catch up more on someone by using a booster than by nuking them. These %s could either be calculated/applied before or after the 'highest unique team score'. EDIT: looking at the scores from the final week, those %s are a tad too high. Still, the main thing is the concept, not the figures. 2) Add a random nuke. Instead of having a guaranteed impact on a specific player, have it hit a random player within, say, 20 ranks of them in either direction - with a massively increased impact (my thought was 5x the normal amount) on whoever it hits. Imagine someone in second is too far behind first to take it by nuking or by using the booster. But if they use the random nuke and get lucky on who it hits, they could get first. If you want to increase the gamble still further, you could make the user become one of the people who could get hit by the nuke. (The downside of this, of course, is that you could end up making the person affected hate you) |
kuuderes_shadowJul 6, 2014 11:57 AM
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
kuuderes_shadow said: I like this idea, however it seems like the player wouldn't lose much depending on the chance % that they could be hit by the random nuke. So I was thinking that maybe there would be a 50% chance that the player would nuke themselves or something like that. If it is a considerable amount, then better make it riskier.2) Add a random nuke. Instead of having a guaranteed impact on a specific player, have it hit a random player within, say, 20 ranks of them in either direction - with a massively increased impact (my thought was 5x the normal amount) on whoever it hits. Imagine someone in second is too far behind first to take it by nuking or by using the booster. But if they use the random nuke and get lucky on who it hits, they could get first. If you want to increase the gamble still further, you could make the user become one of the people who could get hit by the nuke. (The downside of this, of course, is that you could end up making the person affected hate you) |
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