| The main risk from the way I was writing it was from the loss of wildcard/your points from using the nuke and the high chance of hitting someone irrelevant to your position. Shifting the main risk onto the risk of hitting yourself could work, but I think you would have to significantly reduce the number of potential victims as well (perhaps to 2 in either direction rather than 20), or noone would bother using it except in the exact situation I described above. |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
| This season I tracked the anime hashtag uses to see if it would be workable in FAL and I think it totally is. Anime hashtags are posted every season by almost every anime that comes out and they are collected by people into one big post like on Crunchyroll News. From there you use Topsy to count how many tweets each hashtag got. Count it every 4 weeks for FAL using the 30 day period marker, and divide that number by 10 for the points it gets that week. Each anime gets somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 extra points for the weeks tweets are counted. The one exception last season was how utterly obsessed Japan was with Love Live (look at dem sales) which propelled it to get some 90,000 points everytime tweets were counted. Not enough to push it into the top 5 of anime this season thanks to how miserably it did on everything else, but shook things up in a real way on the weeks it was counted. Other shows that did well were Jojo's, Haikyuu and Gochiusa. Introducing tweet scores into FAL make there be more variables in what comes top each week because how many points something gets comes more from what's popular in Japan than with English-speaking fans. Some other notes: Some anime have more than one official hashtag, but in those cases there's will be one that is clearly more popular than the other, so in those cases only count the more popular hashtag. There are also a few anime that don't have a hashtag but those are always the ones that score right down the bottom anyway like kids shows and things like that. So if something doesn't have an official hashtag by the time the season starts, just don't count any tweets for it. It doesn't make a difference anyway. It's easy to compile and adds more variance and meaningful points bonuses while not imbalancing the current points. |
The Cart Driver <-- My awesome anime blog |
5camp said: This season I tracked the anime hashtag uses to see if it would be workable in FAL and I think it totally is. Anime hashtags are posted every season by almost every anime that comes out and they are collected by people into one big post like on Crunchyroll News. From there you use Topsy to count how many tweets each hashtag got. Count it every 4 weeks for FAL using the 30 day period marker, and divide that number by 10 for the points it gets that week. Each anime gets somewhere between 1,000 and 10,000 extra points for the weeks tweets are counted. The one exception last season was how utterly obsessed Japan was with Love Live (look at dem sales) which propelled it to get some 90,000 points everytime tweets were counted. Not enough to push it into the top 5 of anime this season thanks to how miserably it did on everything else, but shook things up in a real way on the weeks it was counted. Other shows that did well were Jojo's, Haikyuu and Gochiusa. Introducing tweet scores into FAL make there be more variables in what comes top each week because how many points something gets comes more from what's popular in Japan than with English-speaking fans. Some other notes: Some anime have more than one official hashtag, but in those cases there's will be one that is clearly more popular than the other, so in those cases only count the more popular hashtag. There are also a few anime that don't have a hashtag but those are always the ones that score right down the bottom anyway like kids shows and things like that. So if something doesn't have an official hashtag by the time the season starts, just don't count any tweets for it. It doesn't make a difference anyway. It's easy to compile and adds more variance and meaningful points bonuses while not imbalancing the current points. I am not opposed to this idea! Would you mind supplying us with your copy of the tweet data you kept track of during this season? It would be helpful to have the full of it on hand when we discuss this as a possible new element to incorporate, and I'm sure that without an automated script customized for the task it'd take a while to gather all the data manually at this point. Thank you in advance. |
| https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/18ULfbE5EZuSmwndztsDSBQNSDgntZCqjqIgVDYRt79g/edit?usp=sharing Google docs version. Sorry it's not the most organised thing, I only started it out of personal interest. The numbers are how many times the anime's hashtag was tweeted in the last 30 days of that week. |
| The Cart Driver <-- My awesome anime blog |
| My 2 cents on the twitter hashtag idea is that it seems too much of an ill fit and too variable to be counted more than once next season. First, I should say I believe FAL should continue to shake things up occasionally from season to season to keep the game fresh. We see one-week bonuses like streaming and home video licenses, new widlcards, and unique team bonuses added and tweaked all the time, which have made positive impacts to the fun of the game. But the core of FAL has always been the prediction of stats of the MAL userbase, and including a lone metric from Twitter could potentially upset the essence of this prediction game. I don't think I need to convince you guys that Twitter is a fundamentally different population than MAL; just look at how wildly different 5camp's hashtag rankings are from the regular FAL rankings from the Spring season. It's a bit random and hugely influenced by Japanese tastes. How much should a fundamentally different set of fans effect FAL scoring? In addition to the question of fit, there are technical issues to handle with twitter hashtag counting. Twitter is an organic conversation place, so who is to decide the official hashtag is the best hashtag to use? I see #jojo_anime, #sidonia_anime, and #nanana_tv in the official list, but tweeters could simply shorten to #jojo, #sidonia, or #nanana instead to save space. The hashtags are also inclined to use Japanese-style truncation rather than English acronym convention; another indication that most of the official hashtag users are Japanese. The One Week Friends hashtag in particular would exclusively be used by Japanese language speakers! In these ways, counting "official" hashtags are too exclusive and will not capture the true amount of references to particular titles made on Twitter. Then consider generic anime titles, non-specific hashtag references, or otherwise common situations where a hashtag may be polluted with occurrences not made to a specific anime title. I mentioned One Week Friends before, but I can conceive situations where non-viewers of shows from past seasons like Another, Flag (Girl), and Humanity Has Declined could adopt hashtags that may confuse anime viewers. Anyone remember the hubbub over #RDG? Red Data Girl and the English town of Reading were in Twitter conflict over the use of the same tag. Then think about big multimedia franchises like Love Live and JoJo's. There are games, concerts, multiple and spinoff series, and other events twitter users may reference using their hashtags. Should FAL count general pop culture discussion surrounding franchises that we aren't certain are direct references to currently airing anime series? Following the precedent that FAL sets by only counting posts in individual episode threads and not in any ancillary topics in series forums, they should not count. But there is no practical way to parse the signal from the noise on Twitter. In those ways, counting Twitter hashtags are too general and broadly inclusive to the true amount of references made to particular anime shows. Twitter hashtags are an intriguing and creative new metric to use in upcoming FAL games, but there are too many exceptions and unknown variables to count hashtags regularly yet. I recommend really refining policy of what hashtags should count and trying it out for only one week this Fall. Then you can better iron out details of how to work with them going forward. EDITS: grammar and phrasing |
kadian1366Jul 25, 2014 2:58 PM
| Ideal anime wife? |
kadian1365 said: stuff Firstly, FAL has not been about predicting what MAL thinks. As you said there's little wildcards like licensing, and in the past has included fansubs and anime blogs. You are wildly overestimating how much of an impact including twitter will have on FAL. It will not fundamentally alter the ratings of each show. The one exception to that last season was Love Live, which as you can see from the record-breaking sales figures it received, was a once in a blue moon event and even still wasn't enough to break into the top 5 FAL scorers that season. On the Japanese fans side, yes it does mostly include them which is precisely why it's interesting. Having a different set of fans look at something switches up the homogeneity of FAL using only MAL users. I've been thinking it would be interesting to use something like Amazon stalker ratings for sales figures for some extra bonus points, but that's a bit overly confusing and hashtag tweets is much easier to understand. On which hashtag to use, I addressed that. Use the points for the hashtag with the most use. In one or two cases there were more than one 'official' hashtag but in every single case one hashtag had 10x more use than the other. As for the hashtag not counting every discussion of an anime on twitter, MAL also doesn't count every person watching an anime. If that was the case, I think the new Sailor Moon would have vastly higher figures on MAL at the moment. MAL if anything is more random and less reflective of what everyone is watching than twitter since it's such a select audience. As for signal vs noise, you can clearly see the most discussion comes during the times the episode is out, even when part of multimedia franchises. The fact that it's part of a multimedia franchise is something you will have to take into account when making your choices. Again, signal vs noise in episodic discussion forums includes tons of people making stupid arguments that have nothing to do with the episode, but FAL includes them too. As for hashtag confusion, that #RDG for the poor town of Reading was because it was originally getting maybe 5 tweets a day then suddenly THOUSANDS of anime fans were using it and you had no chance of seeing anything about Reading. Unless an anime accidentally uses the name of a new Lady Gaga song as its hashtag, I can't see it being a problem. I'm all for a testing period, say weeks 5 and 10 including hashtag scores. |
| The Cart Driver <-- My awesome anime blog |
| How about having to declare an Ace one week in advance? As it is now you can precisely calculate which of your anime will get the most points just before the deadline. With one week between you would have to anticipate how the scores will develop. |
| I love kuuderes_shadow's nuke idea with the 20-ish potential hits. It sounds fun. I'm opposed to the twitter hashtag suggestion for the same reasons kadian1365 gave; I think it distracts from the "core" of the game (predicting MAL stats) and has too many variables. I would sooner give episode discussions a big bonus for one week than implement twitter hashtags into the game. |
| I meant to post this suggestion earlier... but alas...... For a number of FAL seasons, at least since SnK if not earlier, the Ace feature of FAL has nearly become useless. Often there are a couple of series that just explode in popularity, and after week 2-3, the Ace may as well not even be in the game since the same series dominate based on the abnormally high watching count and score. So my suggestion hopes to restore the usefulness of the Ace feature of the game by setting a User Watching Cut-off of when an Ace can be used. Once the watching count of a series passes a certain number of users, the series is no longer eligible to be aced and the ace then goes to the next highest series. In a spreadsheet, I played with a few different cut-offs: 40k, 45k and 50k. You can see which of the top 5 series become ineligible to be aced and in which weeks (red). With all three cut-offs, you can see that the "big" series still have a few weeks where users can ace them at the start of the season. After that, other series then open up to be aced. Spring 2014 was a bit of an unusual season where a number of series had x2 watching points, so after some point I stopped including those scores. The userbase and FAL team picks were really concentrated on a few series, so more series passed the threshold than in Autumn 2014. In terms of which number to choose, I would say 50k is really conservative and probably not of much use. I like 40k the most because it eliminates Shigatsu wa Kimi no Uso in Week 11, versus it only being eliminated in Week 14 with 45k, and never being eliminated with 50k. I think this is a very simple change that would inject some fun back into the Ace, extending its usefulness beyond the first 2-3 weeks of the season and making it less predictable. |
KinetaMar 3, 2015 5:06 AM
| In winter last year (thats just 1 year ago) it took until week 12 for the first thing (nisekoi) to even reach 40k watching - but Autumn had 6 by this point, including the blacklisted series. And it's not just down to how "big" a season is either - this Winter is far smaller than Autumn was but is getting just as much hitting 40k as that did. Spring could well have 10 or more series on the 40k mark by 12 weeks in. The rate at which people pick up new series is changing all the time, and fairly significantly. Thus my only possible concern is that a figure that is suitable for a given season would not necessarily be obvious beorehand, and there might have to be a different figure for each and every FAL season. |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
kuuderes_shadow said: Maybe by week 5 or something the most watched show could serve as a cut-off point.In winter last year (thats just 1 year ago) it took until week 12 for the first thing (nisekoi) to even reach 40k watching - but Autumn had 6 by this point, including the blacklisted series. And it's not just down to how "big" a season is either - this Winter is far smaller than Autumn was but is getting just as much hitting 40k as that did. Spring could well have 10 or more series on the 40k mark by 12 weeks in. The rate at which people pick up new series is changing all the time, and fairly significantly. Thus my only possible concern is that a figure that is suitable for a given season would not necessarily be obvious beorehand, and there might have to be a different figure for each and every FAL season. |
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| ^This idea is interesting because it gives more opportunities to people that doesn't have high scoring titles in their team. This is my first FAL season, I failed to predict the popularity of a lot of series, which isn't not that hard now that I think of it, a bit of research before the FAL season begins is enough to predict the most popular series very easy (or at least most of them), which is not something I did. It still amuses me that once the FAL season starts it is IMPOSSIBLE to get a better position in any way, if you do not have the top 5 series, you'll simply NOT win at this game and not even enter the top 50, even if you missed one series. This game is almost like horse racing. The difference is that there is a lot of planning before the game starts, but once it starts, you can do nothing. The Aces, Wildcards and Bonus Points are useless if you do not have the top 5 series in your team, popularity is all that matters, it outweigh everything. For what purpose would I use an Ace to get three thousand points if the difference between me and the top 100 is a hundred times greater than that? It's laughable how little difference they make in the overall score. I don't have any ideas of how to improve the game. It might seem that I'm just sitting here criticizing the whole thing, but I just told the truth. |
Insem said: Hypothetical scenario: For this season I am sitting in the Top 100. I have failed to predict the popularity of SNAFU 2. However, half the Top 50 have SNAFU 2. I pay 5,000 points to nuke SNAFU 2 by 3,000 points. Everyone with SNAFU makes 3,000 points less this week. Everyone from ranks 51-100 also has a problem with SNAFU 2 and nukes it at the same time. SNAFU 2 loses a total of 150,000 points. SNAFU 2 would've made 60,000 points in the week, but now makes 0 points. Of the Top 50 with SNAFU 2 in their teams, all of them also declared Ace. Since SNAFU 2 scored 0 in the week and was not the highest scorer on their team, they also take a 3,000 point penalty for incorrectly declaring an Ace. My rank suddenly soars up to the Top 10 in one week. (Yes, I'm very salty about SNAFU 2) Way too overpowered. And it would be -90000 in that scenario, not 0. Aces aren't supposed to be a guessing game of things there's no way to know about - if anything were to happen along these lines it would have to be applied after the ace, not before. |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
kuuderes_shadow said: Insem said: Hypothetical scenario: For this season I am sitting in the Top 100. I have failed to predict the popularity of SNAFU 2. However, half the Top 50 have SNAFU 2. I pay 5,000 points to nuke SNAFU 2 by 3,000 points. Everyone with SNAFU makes 3,000 points less this week. Everyone from ranks 51-100 also has a problem with SNAFU 2 and nukes it at the same time. SNAFU 2 loses a total of 150,000 points. SNAFU 2 would've made 60,000 points in the week, but now makes 0 points. Of the Top 50 with SNAFU 2 in their teams, all of them also declared Ace. Since SNAFU 2 scored 0 in the week and was not the highest scorer on their team, they also take a 3,000 point penalty for incorrectly declaring an Ace. My rank suddenly soars up to the Top 10 in one week. (Yes, I'm very salty about SNAFU 2) Way too overpowered. And it would be -90000 in that scenario, not 0. Aces aren't supposed to be a guessing game of things there's no way to know about - if anything were to happen along these lines it would have to be applied after the ace, not before. I think capping deductions at zero would be fair even if more people than necessary nuked the anime in question. I can certainly see where Insem is coming from on choosing exactly the top five within your seven picks. I had four of the top six this season and didn't even break the top 100. Earlier in the season I had four of the top five. (Ore Monogatari eventually got some oomph.) I'm not certain that major shake-ups need to be present or that this is the best way to create them if they are deemed beneficial, but your position is indeed more or less decided from the get-go. Any rank changes you can influence are usually minor, in my experience. My main concern is that this will make FAL even more luck-based than it currently is. There is a degree of skill that can be cultivated in predicting which shows will do well, I think. If there is to be any course to influence a major rise through the ranks despite slightly-inferior skill in this area, I think I would prefer it to rely on external factors, rather than predictions concerning the contestants themselves. |
| I'm hype, good luck everyone. |
TripleSRank said: There is a degree of skill that can be cultivated in predicting which shows will do well, I think. And the biggest issue with this idea is that it completely removes any benefit of this skill. After all, if there's a series that not many people predicted to do well, but you did, then at present that gives you a big advantage. The example that stands out in my mind is Tonari no Kaibutsu-kun which finished top in Fall 2012 whilst being the 12th most picked series at the start. This enabled those few (there were only 45) who had selected it on their team to take the top 20 spots between them. Imagine if something like that were to happen with this rule implemented. What series do you think the mass of people with 5 of the series between 2nd and 9th (which probably made up more than half of all the participants) would pick to nuke down? You'd have the situation where you don't want to pick series that do unexpectedly well as you know they're just going to get nuked down by everyone else. |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
| I'd like to make a suggestion about the archiving of past FAL seasons. Why not make a sticky thread with links to all past seasons of FAL? I think this would be helpful to some (and to me). I doubt it is necessary, but I think it is a neat way for archiving. |
| Just a thought, but what about making the Ace more of a gamble by scaling when the ace is sent in? maybe not quite a 1:1 ratio of increase, bur certainly increase the risk/reward based on how early you send it in. Like if you wait until 24 hours before cut off, you get only the 3K, but if you send it in the Monday after cutoff, get like, +10K/-7.5K? Might make it easier for people to move around the rankings since by the last couple of weeks things are sorta locked in on some cases, this could add a certain level of skill/luck to the process. |
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NeoRevan said: Just a thought, but what about making the Ace more of a gamble by scaling when the ace is sent in? maybe not quite a 1:1 ratio of increase, bur certainly increase the risk/reward based on how early you send it in. Like if you wait until 24 hours before cut off, you get only the 3K, but if you send it in the Monday after cutoff, get like, +10K/-7.5K? Might make it easier for people to move around the rankings since by the last couple of weeks things are sorta locked in on some cases, this could add a certain level of skill/luck to the process. That's far too much of a difference to be honest, although I've no opposition to the principle of the idea. In fact it's one I've considered myself before - at which point I started considering the possibility of submitting aces for later weeks than the present one, eventually getting to the point of attaching ace plans at the same time as you submit your team, at which point I rejected it as it would be confusing to new players. Anyway, usually it's either obvious from the start or a tight finish up to the last day - there's rarely much difference in risk between submitting an ace on the Monday as on the Friday and differentiating between these would mostly serve to benefit people based on when they happen to be online. Maybe +/-3k for within the 48 hours before the deadline, and +/-5k for the period before that would work? You'd also need to consider the impact this would have on the highest unique team score bonus. |
kuuderes_shadowApr 6, 2016 12:57 PM
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
kuuderes_shadow said: NeoRevan said: Just a thought, but what about making the Ace more of a gamble by scaling when the ace is sent in? maybe not quite a 1:1 ratio of increase, bur certainly increase the risk/reward based on how early you send it in. Like if you wait until 24 hours before cut off, you get only the 3K, but if you send it in the Monday after cutoff, get like, +10K/-7.5K? Might make it easier for people to move around the rankings since by the last couple of weeks things are sorta locked in on some cases, this could add a certain level of skill/luck to the process. That's far too much of a difference to be honest, although I've no opposition to the principle of the idea. In fact it's one I've considered myself before - at which point I started considering the possibility of submitting aces for later weeks than the present one, eventually getting to the point of attaching ace plans at the same time as you submit your team, at which point I rejected it as it would be confusing to new players. Anyway, usually it's either obvious from the start or a tight finish up to the last day - there's rarely much difference in risk between submitting an ace on the Monday as on the Friday and differentiating between these would mostly serve to benefit people based on when they happen to be online. Maybe +/-3k for within the 48 hours before the deadline, and +/-5k for the period before that would work? You'd also need to consider the impact this would have on the highest unique team score bonus. I didn't really think that score I gave would be the amount, I was just using it as a clear example. Yeah, there would be times that it would be far too easy to tell, but that tight finish is where I think it would be interesting and I think that the later is generally more often if I'm in a position to Ace(except Week 1, that would usually be more free points). Doesn't it already matter when people can get online? As it is now, if someone can only get on at the start of the week, they have to either forego aceing, or take a bigger gamble than people who can get on at 10AM on Sunday morning to see the most up to date numbers. There is just the same Risk/Reward for both. But that's just how I see it. I will say, I didn't consider the unique team score. TBH, It has (personally) so rarely affected me that I almost forgot it was a factor, haha. |
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| To elucidate somewhat on my previous post: The impact on unique team score really means that you want to keep the number of changes in score to a minimum as the more different score ranges you put in the more it takes away from the tactical element of that. The desire for simplicity would also point in the same direction, which would benefit both users and staff. Obviously, the lowest number of changes without abandoning the idea completely is 1. You would want to have this time break be a multiple of 24 hours before the submission deadline so that you don't end up with situations where some timezones get more days on the higher points than others. 72 hours or more before the deadline is pointless - outside of the first two weeks there is scarcely ever more accurate information in the different days. Someone who uses their ace at the start of the week is thus risking no more than someone who does so half way through the week. One slight problem is that the real difference often only comes within the final few hours, but as already established it wouldn't be practical to put a boundary there. So really you're looking at either 24 hours or 48 hours before the deadline. Personally I think the latter feels better, which is why I stated that. By 25 or 26 hours in you're taking more of a gamble than just a few hours before the deadline but if you've been watching you can generally have a good feel of what way things are going to go. |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
| So, in light of recent events, I believe the topic of whether or not the number of watching entries a show needs before it is disqualified from aces is something worth discussing. I can guess at why it was dropped to 45,000 for this particular iteration, but hindsight being what it is, it seeems a bit unfortunate in that it looks like this time around, it could very soon become meaningless for quite a few people very early on in the season. |
| What about a kind of ace on the post count in a given period of one or two weeks ? It seems more unpredictable and week dependent. And giving more points to someone that predict it correctly in the first half (instead of the second half) of the period could also be interesting. fst said: So, in light of recent events, I believe the topic of whether or not the number of watching entries a show needs before it is disqualified from aces is something worth discussing. I can guess at why it was dropped to 45,000 for this particular iteration, but hindsight being what it is, it seeems a bit unfortunate in that it looks like this time around, it could very soon become meaningless for quite a few people very early on in the season. I think it should always go up regardless of the popularity of the last season because there are more and more users on MAL (thus more seasonly watchers) as the time goes by. Last increase between spring 2015 and fall 2015 was just too high (10k) An increase of 5k by season should be enough. 40k in spring 2015 (not enough) 50k in fall 2015 (too high) 45k was enough 45k now (not enough) It should go over 50k next season, I would suggest 55k. |
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| I think it's pretty hard to say what should be the limit. I can say, that this season is way more better than the last for FAL, that's why 45k is too low (gosh, I am watching way too much this time). In the next FAL the season could be shit for all I can say and then 55k will be way too high. But the factor, that more ppl get on MAL should also be considered, but what I want to say is that it also depends on the season. |
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aeg2138 said: Hey I have a suggestion for future FAL. I realize that not everyone has the time to keep up with everything constantly and this is just for fun. But could the mods consider making it a rule from here on out that if you register a team to play in the FAL season and then leave the FAL club during the season AND are not active/do not re-join for a certain period, that those user's teams are disqualified and their points should not be counted? Cause there are people/profiles like that this time around; that signed up and registered teams but aren't active and the users are no longer part of the club and they are RUINING everything. They are no longer part of the club and they are not contributing or participating in any way, yet their teams are still affecting others which is kind of annoying and I personally think it really kills the fun for others who are actively playing. How in the world are they ruining things? An active participant can ALWAYS beat (or be beaten by, if that's what they'd rather do) an inactive one in a similar initial situation. And FAL isn't a club activity. You don't have to be in the club to participate, or to be actively involved in it (sending aces, doing team swaps etc.). I didn't join the club on a permanent basis until my fourth time participating, and actively left the club during one season since then when the club comments got into extensively discussing whether each series "deserved" how well it was doing in FAL (lol). |
kuuderes_shadowMay 18, 2016 11:48 AM
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
aeg2138 said: It's not a matter of beating them. The non participating individuals are currently affecting some of current the x2 scoring series and are making it a headache to try and work around them and refuse to do anything about it. I don't think it's fair that people who are actively playing have to work around people who pick teams just for the lolz and just leave and do nothing without any intention of further participation. That's pretty much allowing and encouraging people to troll as well as encouraging underhanded score manipulation via multiple accounts. It's just a suggestion and my opinion on the matter though. The rules have always stated that participants are not required to be active with their teams during the FAL season. This is not something we're looking to change because policing it in a fair manner would be too difficult due to the subjectivity, and would require a lot more work from the FAL staff team than we have time for. If a participant wants to set a bracket of seven and see how things go without making a single move during the season, they are welcome to it. Aces, swaps and wildcards are just bonus ways of bringing in some variety and making the season more competitive. One of the risks of banking on titles that might qualify for the 2x watching/completed bonus is that those titles could be on the active teams of participants who decide not to play competitively or be otherwise active. That all said, if anyone becomes aware of evidence that multiple teams belong to a single IRL person, that is against the rules and we would ask that they come to FAL staff about it. |
Darkconfidant7 said: Nukes seem pretty degenerate, as they are not very good but allow timmy to have a large impact on your team without you having anyway to interact with them. I would far rather see something as an alternative to points and the extra wild card swap. I would like to see a way to boost the ace. This allows players who want to be risky, another outlet as well as allows players that are behind to potentially gain more points than they would otherwise. We could see something like Ace is either a +4000/-4000 or even something along the lines of +5000/-6000 where you need to 60%+ with the ace to be in the green. This risk needs to be within reason as having someone comeback from nothing is degenerate in itself. I would like to see the ace buff as something to get you a few more places than you otherwise would instead of a win the game. This would allow players in the mid-low tiers a way to do better and get them to feel like they are still apart of the game instead of saying I'm losing, I'm miserable I'm going to nuke the player above me and try and ruin him. This will make the community more positive as this will also encourage these members with these high-value aces to be more active in the community to allow better picks to allow their aces to be viable. Edit: My other gripe is how you have blacklist shows that didn't have a very popular first season/are geared towards children. This seems to lower the skill cap as well as hinder possible black horses from leading the charge. It seems like a dumbing down of picks which seems counter-intuitive to you banning snap picks, which makes teams more diverse, requires a larger knowledge of MALs database and user base tendencies which is an increase in skill cap. I wish you would push this towards a higher skill cap with a larger focus on community and less of I'm losing, I nuke you and now I stop caring about this FAL. Regarding the criteria used in determining the eligible titles list, they are intended to encourage more diverse teams during the selection process (e.g. blacklisting highly popular titles that are bound to be picked by everyone and pose an unfair advantage should they be allowed) while reducing the burden on the script runner and during times when data must be gathered manually in the face of technological issues. I keep track of each FAL season's preseason PTW counts over the course of several months during the downtime between FAL seasons, as titles are announced/confirmed for that FAL season, at intervals of every few weeks to every few days. This shows PTW number growth over time both for individual titles on their own and as they compare to other titles for that season. The past few years of such data as this and the actual results as shown during their respective seasons have shown us that titles whose PTW counts have been significantly low or which are targeted at very young audiences (or both) almost always wind up being highly unpopular and watched by a very low, ineffectual number of users during the season, especially as most don't wind up picked up by simulcast companies or fansub groups in English. Our selection process is definitely not perfect (look at how popular and amazing Osomatsu-san turned out to be!), but we weed out titles using these types of criteria for the good of the season-long challenge, and aim to keep as many eligible as possible so long as they meet a bare minimum of visible potential by mid-month prior to the season's opening. Should we make mistakes in our selection process, that only gives us more feedback on how to better improve that very selection process. |
kuuderes_shadow said: 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) Why do we need more RNG. I would far rather see the nuke removed as it lowers the skill cap of this. Can you imagine losing because some pleb down in rank 47 hit you with a nuke that you have ZERO way of interacting with. This is like the blue shell in Mario Kart on steroids. |
Darkconfidant7 said: kuuderes_shadow said: 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) Why do we need more RNG. I would far rather see the nuke removed as it lowers the skill cap of this. Can you imagine losing because some pleb down in rank 47 hit you with a nuke that you have ZERO way of interacting with. This is like the blue shell in Mario Kart on steroids. This is nothing like the blue shell. With that any player, no matter what their position, can target the player in first with (almost) 100% accuracy. With this a player hits one of the players within a certain number of places of them, potentially including themself. You could increase the probability of the latter outcome if you wanted to. How would you be hit by someone in rank 47 if the limit was 20 places in either direction? Unless you mean that you're sat 30 odd places down the ranking and expect to suddenly jump up to first (unlikely but not quite inconceivable given how many points the final week is worth). Anyone with the ability to hit first place generally won't want to throwaway their wildcard on this unless they themself can (and can only) get first by doing so, in which case you losing from it is basically exactly the purpose of having this. Incidentally, a "nuke defence" style wildcard could be interesting, but with the total number of nukes being used over most seasons being countable on a single hand with fingers to spare, this would be useless. I think I've only once seen nukes used within the top 50 players, and that was in a classic case of prisoner's dilemma (neither use a nuke = they share first; one uses a nuke = that one takes first alone; both use a nuke = both fall to joint 2nd. Both used a nuke.) And yes, I am one of the few people who has been hit by a nuke before. The player who nuked me hadn't given up but instead had calculated that they would be able to rank higher (something like 107th rather than 108th) if they did so. I prefer the revised version of this suggestion (mentioned at the top of this page) to the original version, though. |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
| [quote=kuuderes_shadow message=47826964 This is nothing like the blue shell. With that any player, no matter what their position, can target the player in first with (almost) 100% accuracy. With this a player hits one of the players within a certain number of places of them, potentially including themself. You could increase the probability of the latter outcome if you wanted to. How would you be hit by someone in rank 47 if the limit was 20 places in either direction? Unless you mean that you're sat 30 odd places down the ranking and expect to suddenly jump up to first (unlikely but not quite inconceivable given how many points the final week is worth). Anyone with the ability to hit first place generally won't want to throwaway their wildcard on this unless they themself can (and can only) get first by doing so, in which case you losing from it is basically exactly the purpose of having this. Incidentally, a "nuke defence" style wildcard could be interesting, but with the total number of nukes being used over most seasons being countable on a single hand with fingers to spare, this would be useless. I think I've only once seen nukes used within the top 50 players, and that was in a classic case of prisoner's dilemma (neither use a nuke = they share first; one uses a nuke = that one takes first alone; both use a nuke = both fall to joint 2nd. Both used a nuke.) And yes, I am one of the few people who has been hit by a nuke before. The player who nuked me hadn't given up but instead had calculated that they would be able to rank higher (something like 107th rather than 108th) if they did so. I prefer the revised version of this suggestion (mentioned at the top of this page) to the original version, though.[/quote] The reason the blue shell is needed in Mario Kart is due to all of the other items. Places 2-8 can get hit with a lot while 1st generates a larger and larger lead as they are not being slowed down nearly as much by items. The blue shell exists to take the lead first has which may be 7 seconds and now shortens it to a 2 second lead, but the player in first knows its coming and if they are close to second they can make them take the hit too. With this nuke suggestion where there are no other interactive items it seems not only out of place, but game breaking. The blue shell ALWAYS targets the player in first, yet this could nuke a player in 2nd, 3rd or even 57. |
| How will the rankings/points be posted (aka; how will I know how I'm doing?) I've never done this before and I read the introduction and everything and am still wondering how this will all be kept track of and posted? |
xhigurashi198x said: How will the rankings/points be posted (aka; how will I know how I'm doing?) I've never done this before and I read the introduction and everything and am still wondering how this will all be kept track of and posted? Rankings will be posted in forum posts made by FAL staff every Sunday. There will also be a catchall post with links to each of these weekly results posts as well as a highly detailed points breakdown. An example from this past spring is right here, to give you an idea of its level of organization. |
| Two suggestions: 1. I've thought this for a while, but keep forgetting to post it. My thought is to remove the 3 week interval from bench swaps. I can't remember if this was added in after the reboot or if it's always been there, but it seems too restrictive to me. If I only get 3 swaps (+1 if I use my wildcard), why can't I swap when I want to? If I use all my swaps early in the game with poor planning, isn't that my own problem? Since there are a finite number of swaps, I'm not sure I understand the logic in also having a time restriction. Sure, it makes it more difficult, but is that added difficulty necessary? In a way I feel the bench has less importance with it. If not this, then I'd like it if the bench could somehow have a bit more weight in the game. (Not entirely sure how though.) 2. This is less of a game suggestion, and more of a stats suggestion. I'd be reeeeally curious to know the final overall rankings of each anime at the end of the season by points category as well. e.g. if Jojo was 3rd place, why was it? How many points did it get from score vs watching vs ep disc? I can guesstimate this based on rough knowledge, but it'd be really interesting to know when planning future teams. Thanks for considering them! |
KinetaOct 2, 2016 2:35 PM
| With regards to (1) - that would make it easy for people to switch in a series for a good points week without paying any consequences, rather than having to calculate/predict whether it's worth having in the team for a 3 week period - which is easily the single biggest prediction element of the game after the formation of your team in the first place. Of course, this can already be done from week 9 onwards using the extra swap wildcard, but this comes with a cost of points and of preventing you from using any other wildcards. I've thought up various ways of getting the bench to influence the game, but most of them actually discourage varying the team throughout the game and/or give still more relative influence to the initial team selection. I'm rather partial to the idea of losing points based on unused swaps at the end, which would penalise people for not making use of their benched series, but I've not suggested it before as I'm not sure how it would go down, or what actual influence it would have on how people play. It could be disasterous. One that wouldn't have a direct effect on this but could potentially work to encourage more use of the benched series is the double-swap wildcard, which would enable you (at a cost) to use 2 of your swaps to swap in both benched series at the same time. Regarding (2) you can go through working it out exactly as each week has a breakdown of point source. It would be a fair bit of hassle, though, so if it's relatively easy for the staff to do then this seems like a good idea to me. |
| There is no such thing as shit taste. Only idiots who think everyone should have the same taste as they do. |
| Let's be making use of the new MAL notification by adding an @ before a team's name in the results thread, this will notify people that the results thread has been posted, for those who forget the day. |
 Join the MSP Club for an in-depth look at score progressions and other stats of currently airing anime |
| Can you please clarify rules to read that "highest unique team score" bonus is based on scores before ace or wildcard bonuses are added. I was under the misconception that they counted for the last four games. |
 |
siberdude said: Can you please clarify rules to read that "highest unique team score" bonus is based on scores before ace or wildcard bonuses are added. I was under the misconception that they counted for the last four games. They are based on scores after ace and wildcard bonuses are added, though. Aces and wildcards are two ways that make it possible for someone with the same active team as others to be able to acquire the highest unique team score. |
| While talking to another FAL player i came up with an idea for a wildcard. The rules for it are a bit complicated but i guess it would increase the competivity of the game Wildcard: At the cost of 20000-40000 points switch one of you benched anime for one of the eligible anime that isn't on your team. You need to wait 2 weeks until you are able to swap the new bench anime to your active team. The chosen anime must have less than watching+completed 50000 members. |
 "Be who you are and say what you mean, because those who mind don't matter, and those who matter don't mind" - Dr. Seuss |
| new FAL season let's go. Good rule changes v0v |
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| I was thinking about changing the rules for swaps (or at least the extra swap wildcard) to make things more interesting and tactical. Basically to give more options for optimization and decision-making during the season. Right now swaps are basically only there for changing your starting team permanently, not so much for making effective use of your bench for one high-scoring week. Having that additional option would add some depth to it I think. Let me explain: If you have a title on your bench that is good on score/dropped/favorite weeks but low on viewers and forum posts it is incredibly difficult to get use out of it for more than the very last week because of how the schedule only has two weeks in between those during the second half (the half where those parts really count). You can's switch in a show for the score/dropped/favorite weeks, then wildcard swap it out and still have it ready for the next score/dropped/favorite week again. You can only ever use them for one of those weeks which will usually be week 14. I think that's pretty boring and predictable and also limits the worth of the wild card swap. My suggestion would be to not count the wild card swap as a swap in the traditional sense, so that it doesn't reset the timer for when you can make your next swap. So if you use a regular swap in week 11 you can use your next regular swap in week 14 no matter if you use a wildcard swap in week 12 (or 13), for example. I don't really see any downside in this, it just makes the wildcard swap more relevant and interesting and generally provides more options. I'd be fine with bumping the cost to 4k or 5k too if you think that's necessary to balance it. Alternatively the general cooldown for swap could be reduced to 2 weeks but that would be a more drastic change I feel so the first option seems safer. |
| I probably regret this post by now. |
| Please at least let the users know in case if FAL is cancelled or there isn't any plan to continue it. I really disappointed with the fact that there isn't any notification or any form of communication from the admin/staffs regarding the cancellation of FAL Fall 2017. If there weren't enough staffs that can handle FAL, also please let the users know at least 1 month before. Because what happened in FAL Fall 2017 at least from my pov shows that the admin/staffs themselves aren't really that eager to give their effort toward the continuation of FAL. Sorry and thanks |
TriZen said: Please at least let the users know in case if FAL is cancelled or there isn't any plan to continue it. I really disappointed with the fact that there isn't any notification or any form of communication from the admin/staffs regarding the cancellation of FAL Fall 2017. If there weren't enough staffs that can handle FAL, also please let the users know at least 1 month before. Because what happened in FAL Fall 2017 at least from my pov shows that the admin/staffs themselves aren't really that eager to give their effort toward the continuation of FAL. Sorry and thanks FAL is on hold because we were not able to find someone to replace a member who did a large amount of pre-season and during-season work but has since stepped down due to work making life too busy to keep their FAL commitment. Without such a replacement for this staffer, FAL will not be able to restart. FAL has been seeking this replacement since March. Fall 2017's season being cancelled does not reflect on the remaining staff's eagerness "to give their effort toward the continuation of FAL," it is a reflection of them literally not having enough people on staff to handle the workload due to the loss of the staffer who stepped down. If fans of FAL would like to see FAL continue, FAL staff encourage interested members willing to take on the tasks listed in the bottom half of this post. As I am the FAL staffer who stepped down due to RL demands, I can only say that I'd like to not see FAL die just because I had to prioritize work over online funtimes. |
| @Numi I understand that TriZen's comment on "eagerness" was misguided, and would have hit a sore point with me if I were currently a FAL staff member (or recently retired). That being said, I do think he has two valid points. I really disappointed with the fact that there isn't any notification or any form of communication from the admin/staffs regarding the cancellation of FAL Fall 2017. Judging from the club comments, I think many were disappointed about this. Players were waiting until the very last minute for a thread to appear. The two comments made by staff in September (and since) were asking for people to apply (last minute). That the season may not happen was never mentioned. I think asking for a notification saying, "Sorry guys, we couldn't make Fall 2017, but we hope to be back strong for Spring 2018! <application information>" is a small request.If there weren't enough staffs that can handle FAL, also please let the users know at least 1 month before. You said, "FAL has been seeking this replacement since March." Luna's post is from 2015, and she is not currently a FAL staff member. A new thread was not created. The existing thread was not shared with the club (via MAL's notifications system). There is no request for members to apply in the Final Results/Week 14 thread. Nothing was posted in the club comments asking for new staff members between Jul 10 to Sep 23.I'm the last person on MAL to ever negatively criticise or blame about things being late, and I know all the struggles that come with manning a group of volunteers when you have a real life and a bunch of other projects on the go. I'm casting zero blame here. When I realised the FAL Fall season wasn't going to happen, I thought, "Hopefully this gives them enough time to get a solid team together for Spring 2018". So zero anger, blame, or negativity from me. I just think TriZen has two valid points, and I hope that the staff members who read his post are aware of it :) |
KinetaJan 2, 2018 3:19 AM
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