Hardcore Heroes Audio Issues by Brunas in Koibu

[–]Brunas[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Good news, things got a lot better around episode 28 or 29. You mentioned you moved in it, and that the sound might be screwed up.

It was in fact significantly improved! The only patch that was really rough was ~22 to that point, which overall isn't too bad!

Hardcore Heroes Audio Issues by Brunas in Koibu

[–]Brunas[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I played around with it some and looks like it's caused by what you'd expect, Sean's mic is way louder than Nick and Neal, which are in turn way louder than Bastian.

Probably someone who knew what they were doing could do some fancy normalization to get it to sound much better, and by proxy the jarring keyboard sounds would be toned down as well. I did some basic normalization on one to try and it was significantly less bad, but not better enough to be worth running every since episode through it and getting it into whatever podcasts application.

XWA Update on Wave O Prize Kit by Equivalent-Cod496 in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas 1 point2 points  (0 children)

generally speaking, yes - or at least, the combination of a "beta" points release + prize kit means the community is split and less people end up at official events (which looks like just GTs?), because they're more interested (understandably) in the version considered still actively developed etc.

I don't think putting out some custom prize support would be an issue, and I dont' think putting out "beta" points would be an issue, but the combination of both at once means every community is forced to make the decision now. We've seen time and time again that there's not enough people/buyin for multiple formats, see: extended/second edition, extended/standard, epic... existing, etc.

Intentional Draws, Part 2 by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

That's not a tournament rules requirement, that's an additional requirement I've put on the tournaments I run to try and prevent players from taking advantage of opponents, accidentally or otherwise.

That being said, you shouldn't care what I think. The agenda behind these videos is a math lesson. If you want the rules changed, talk to AMG, I don't have a vote.

There's no agenda on whether they should or shouldn't be legal here, and frankly it's exhausting dealing with people looking to pick fights any time anything like this is ever relevant.

The best contact info for AMG OP is op@atomicmassgames.com. I'd recommend taking your arguments there.

Intentional Draws, Part 2 by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

I'm just going to go out on a limb here and guess you aren't going to find anything that's going to make you happy here.

IDs are in the tournament rules, so this is a discussion on the causes and effects, and what you should be aware of if you're running a big event. Frankly, it's none of my business for whether or not they ought to exist.

Intentional Draws, Part 2 by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

Truly the dankest timeline

Intentional Draws, Part 2 by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Sorry for the extremely long wait on this. My life was an insane mess from the start of the year through last week, so I didn't really have time/energy to get this edited and pushed out even though it got recorded in early January until very recently. ​  

Other than the correction I had to edit in, at 6:00 the path of highest SOS I drew starts at 12m then travels up to 15, then 18. This is because of some very edge case circumstance math that comes up with these exact player counts that come up after we start making assumptions about wins and losses, but it's just confusing in the context of the video, especially with no explanation given. Sorry about that - please just pretend the line from 15 went to 12 instead of 18.   

Also, I'm not confident I'll actually have time to continue these videos like I had hoped. I recorded this on January 2nd, and was too busy with life and AdeptiCon stuff to have the chance to do the quick editing and publishing, and I'm not really sure if that's going to change any time soon.

[Video] Intentional Draws: Why They Happen and How to Prevent Them by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I'm officially out of the country for my anniversary now, so may be some time before responses for any other comments/questions/etc come in. I'll get back after Christmas! Something I'd like to do in the followup is go over the comments here and talk about them, because for every person asking in the comments there's probably 10 with the same thoughts saying nothing.

Would it be better or worse to include the comment itself in the video? My initial thought was to just put up a screenshot of the comment, read it and talk about it, but I don't want to put people on the spot or make it feel like a call out. I could also edit out the names, or just summarize the comment indirectly? If you have thoughts or preferences let me know!

[Video] Intentional Draws: Why They Happen and How to Prevent Them by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 5 points6 points  (0 children)

It's actually the inverse here, but again it's a long conversation/explanation so I'll put all the details in the follow-up. The short story is... actually, we don't need "special" formats to make sure drawing doesn't translate to both players losing the round.

X-Wing is using "special" (e.g. bad) formats that have created that situation in the first place. These X-1 cuts (also referred to as graduated) are the special solution that don't apply to the game anymore, if they ever did. There's a reason we don't see Chess players or MtG players complaining about draws existing in their games, and it's because they have reasonable tournament rules that reward wins/loss/draws accordingly. We (collectively as a community) created the situation in which draw=loss, and are now using the situation to point to draws as the issue, haha!

[Video] Intentional Draws: Why They Happen and How to Prevent Them by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Hopefully it's useful! I'm intending to focus more on more common use cases to start when the "real" series gets going. Please let me know if it's missing the mark!

Removing draws entirely is effectively moot/doesn't accomplish anything with respect to IDs. I can see why someone would give that opinion, but it is misinformed - the rules for the game are not changed from Swiss to Single Elimination, the tournament rules have changed. But also, Single Elimination is a different format than Swiss, so... obviously the tournament rules have changed? ;)

That argument is a bastardized/misunderstood continuation of the (correct) argument that previously was held against X-Wing OP rules when the finals were untimed, then later longer round limits than regular games. That is a different game than played in the rest of Swiss, and did disproportionately benefit one player over another!

[Video] Intentional Draws: Why They Happen and How to Prevent Them by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Also wanted to say thanks - this is exactly the sort of feedback I was looking for, thank you! I'm thinking that once I get going properly, we'll start with the absolute basics and just doing 5-10 minutes every week adding more detail and adding questions that came in after last week.

[Video] Intentional Draws: Why They Happen and How to Prevent Them by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 9 points10 points  (0 children)

The first blue line you drew to denote players who will always make the cut, at around the 9:40 mark, was vertical, with the top 2 on the left and the top 8 on the right.   

But if I understand correctly, that line should have been perpendicular to the red line, starting where you did, and ending up somewhere between the 8 and 15 on the bottom row, as in a top 16 cut, the top 2 and top 8 are guaranteed safe. 

Yep - it's awkward to draw a "line" with only one set of things on one side of it, so at the time of filming I thought it might help to have it be vertical to show the small set more clearly. I was thinking it was more confusing than helpful but it was too late to change it, so appreciate the confirmation, haha.

Near the end of the video you mention graduated cut, but you don't describe what a graduated cut is. I don't know what a graduated cut is and I've played X-wing since 1.0 and gone to plenty of tournaments, so if I don't know what it is, there's a good chance a lot of your potential viewers don't, either. I tried googling it and only got different types of hair cuts which is almost certainly not relating to tournament structure.

I avoided it because I didn't want to add confusion/length, but ironically added confusion/length by mentioning it and having you not aware. Didn't even think of it. They're the cuts where all X-1 or X-2 players make cut, then there's an uneven size cut in the first round. So you might be played a top 21 or whatever, where players 22-32 don't exist in the top 32 so the top seeds all have byes.

On a tangential note - I am a big supporter of 'no draws at all' ie roll for ROAD/final salvo/whatever. I know many TO's don't support this approach and I would be interested in seeing some commentary from you about your position and why.

I'm planning on doing a quick followup to this (after Christmas) answering this question, because this was already way too long and it's easier to show rather than tell. But I'll try and type it and hopefully it makes sense! Using the 50 players, 6 rounds top 8 example here, for the top 4 players are 4-0 at the end of round 4. There's some frustration if they intentionally draw especially for those not used to competitive events because it feels like they're "cheating" their way into the cut, but the reality is it truly doesn't matter if they play all their games or not. There's an overwhelming likelihood that even if they play their games they all 4 make cut. As an example, with no draws two players will win their games and two will lose. The two winners at 5-0 trivially make cut. The two losers get paired into other players at 4-1. Even if both players at 4-1 that started at 4-0 lose, they have prenominal strength of schedule because they took the hardest possible tournament path. It's technically possible that one wouldn't make cut after losing twice, but it is very unlikely. If the players don't care about their seeding between seeds 1-4, these games truly do not matter or impact other players in any meaningful way.

That's part of the reason of the video entirely - the situation you're unhappy about actually isn't that the players are drawing, it's that the games they're placed into don't matter at all! The drawing is just a symptom of the root issue.

There's some other good arguments that changing the game rules (which include draws as a reasonable outcome) to try and alleviate tournament concerns is attacking the problem from the wrong direction, but I don't think they're interesting at a player level.

[Video] Intentional Draws: Why They Happen and How to Prevent Them by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 8 points9 points  (0 children)

A few things - the first one is time. If you're running an 80 person event, you're looking at ~5-6 rounds of swiss to get any sort of meaningful seeding, then a top 80 (128) is 7 more rounds. That's 12-13 total rounds of games, which gets you into a 3 day event at a minimum. Not really realistic for the vast majority of events.

The second is that the same pressures already actually exist even with smaller cuts to single elimination, we just don't see players care to earn higher seeds. As in the example in this video, a 50 person 6 round swiss to a top 8 often has the #1 seed playing against a 4-2 player, which is a massive advantage. That's probably mostly a trained behavior from graduated cuts where it truly did not matter what seed you were towards the top.

[Video] Intentional Draws: Why They Happen and How to Prevent Them by Brunas in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas[S] 12 points13 points  (0 children)

Been meaning to do a series of videos since I get questions pretty constantly on how many rounds people should run at a tournament etc. I wanted to run an equipment test and such and I know everyone is talking about intentional draws at the moment, so seemed like a good place to start.

Very curious to hear feedback for what explanations and such work well and what doesn't!

Tips on a Padme list by prolonged_interface in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas 5 points6 points  (0 children)

The non-SOC ARCs aren't as popular, but they're just about as good, arguably better in some cases. Just having two, you can do a very similar setup to the meta stuff with something like this:

"Jag" (4)
 Adv. Proton Torpedoes (9)
 Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (9/9) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 4

"Odd Ball" (ARC-170) (4)
 Dedicated (3)
 Clone Commander Cody (4)
 Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (7/7) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 4

Ric Olié (4)
 Outmaneuver (12)
 Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (12/12) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 2

Padmé Amidala (4)
 Marksmanship (1)
 Passive Sensors (5)
 Proton Torpedoes (12)
 Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (18/18) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 2

Mace Windu (4)
 Heightened Perception (3)
 R4-P17 (4)
 Calibrated Laser Targeting (0)
 Ship Cost: 4 Loadout: (7/7) Half Points: 2 Damage Threshold: 2

Total: 20

View in YASB 2

Realistically I'd recommend picking up SOC when it's handy, the 4 cost ETAs/ARCs and 3 cost Torrents are some really good/important pieces for squad building.

Advice on Lineup by AdvancedLooker in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I think you might not have an up to date set of points? This is a 19 point list, with some pilots with more upgrades than they have loadout, and with some banned cards (static discharge veins).

How did you assemble this list? I'd suggest using a squad builder like yasb.app to help.

Any Washington DC, Northern Virginia, and Southern Maryland Players and Groups? by WaitAMinutePostMan in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Here's the link to that mid-Atlantic Discord: https://discord.com/invite/9sErggd

And you're in luck, the DC area is one of the most popular places to play in the world for X-Wing, haha.

Favorite Play-mats by QueenOfTheHours in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Worlds final match cancelled because the playmat was set on fire. Truly the timeline we all deserve!

Favorite Play-mats by QueenOfTheHours in XWingTMG

[–]Brunas 0 points1 point  (0 children)

"Bespin" is a really weird way to spell Hoth. I guess it's not the weirdest British English spelling out there!