The problem with luck, although it arguable takes more skill, is as Kryzcho said; one game can be extremely important. I'm personally not sure what I'd prefer with respect to luck.. However I do not want cyclic move, and I do not want pick speed to decide first pick. (I don't want.. what a good argument :p)


It sucks when you lose due to luck only, knowing that if it were opposite you'd win instead. I don't enjoy winning simply due to luck either (though it's better than losing!). Therefore I could stand behind a different luck level.

Biggest problem with 0% WR is that when you try to get +4/5 bonus in 2nd turn with separate pick you may fail (3,2% chance to happen). This somewhat reminds the problem with 7vs4 failing in 16% WR luck, but I think this case is way more severe, as such early bad luck is hard to turn around. I'm pretty sure I saw some games surrendered turn 2 for this reason alone, I did that few times myself I think.

0% SR on the other hand feels a bit too much. Since 2 neutrals always kill only 1 attacker, it feel like players have more armies. Whether it is good thing or not, I'm not sure.

I like WR more I think, mainly because I'm used to play it so often.

+1 and +1 to both of master of desaster's posts

Everyone here is talking about risk management. good. then explain how to win this game:

https://www.warlight.net/MultiPlayer?GameID=9193671

Actually no way to win after you get bad leftover + fail the 3v2. I deployed all my army there, is just bad luck. I don't think a game should be decided by luck.

Most of the game between similar skilled player are decided by luck factor.

Ladder should be able to measure skill player, not how much lucky a player can be.

If you are gonna change it I think cyclic move order is more important than 0% SR when it comes to reducing the luck in ladders

I Disagree, how many games u lose bc your stack could't reach opponent and he run for lot of turns? not so many i guess. More important is elimiante luck in picks. Too often have 1st pick is game changer. Biggest factor is, if i know my opponent probably picked faster, i will use additional time to try to find a coutenr to the strategy.
I believe, the choice between pick fast and get 1st pick, and think more (almsot 3 days as boot time) and get pick 2&3 would be well balanced.

Also, i believe, that if ladder would change to the template of medium earth coins games, lot of people would try coin games as well, as they know the template after played lot of ladder games, that may help Fizzer to get higher money. ( you are not going to play a template for real money if you don't know it, and maybe you are lazy to play it in open games). (autopromotion basically)

For those reason i believe every ladder should have 0% SR no luck cycle.

On a side note, directed to the prospect of adding 4 picks per player: I think this gives people too much coverage on the map. As I play the template more and more the limitation of only having 2 picks per player has been growing on me, and I think that the added layer of metagaming by viewing the opponent's previous games for picking habits and the psychological layer of predicting their picks from insufficient information should also be considered an aspect of skill.

I agree with what Krzychu said, basically you describe a bad template, full of rock scisser papper situation.

Best case scenario is template where you can focus only on finding optimal picks and strategy that always win, no matter what your opponents do. I'm aware there is probably not way to create settings that always work this way, but we should get something as close as possible.

i couldn't agree more, +1.

That's why i like Europe 3v3 0% SR 4x4 random warlord no luck cycle: there are no rock siccer paper situation, you know where the opponent is, and best strategy ALWAYS WIN, no random factor or lucky guess. In the actual 2v2 template, you cannot know where your opponent is, which is bad, bc since the start you have to make moves where doesn't exist the best move.

Edited 8/11/2015 11:57:48

The main problem i see in 2v2 ladder is that with 2 picks sometimes losing 1 pick means that you loose a whole control of an area. 3 or 4 picks brings to the table the idea of backups and counters. Also 0% WR should be a better choice of luck here imo. As many of you, i also think that managing risks is skill, but i don't like 16% for the simple reason that you play with 4 armies per neutral territory in distribution, and failing a 7v4 can be a pain.

i didn't say it, but i li9ke 4 picks instead 2 in 2v2 ladder as well

I went through most of that history (joined before the ladders were created), but I still like the lower luck. I loved every change in that direction up to the no-luck cycle. (Although I dislike the "speed" aspect.) I agree with (among others) Chris, Beren and Krzychu:
1v1 is fine, SR would be fine but is not needed.
2v2 would be better with 0% luck for sure, SR is optional as well.
2v2 would be better with 3, possibly 4 picks per player. (Although I understood the reasoning against it on chat.)
Seasonal is better with no-luck templates as Krzychu explains nicely.

Edited 8/11/2015 13:14:56

I have had many games where luck decided it %100 (for me or against). I've had 5/6 of my 3v2s (which I don't use a ton actually) fail. There is no way to overcome that stuff when it happens. You expect them to fail once and a while (%20 of the time), but you can't do much about losing most of them. Not to mention the really stupid things like a 1 poke taking a 1 and breaking your bonus when you did your moves perfectly. Games should not be decided like that on a ladder IMO.

Cycle move is less important. I have had a couple times where I lost first move 4-5 turns in a row, but honestly that is pretty rare. With the OP card, you can minimize that risk as well (by being strategic with the use of it).

Edited 8/11/2015 13:10:30

Fizzer - any word on a non-speed way to decide first pick? If you could do that (removing the speed aspect from "no-luck", then I would support a no-luck scenario on the ladders %100.

And for those who think no-luck means no risk, that isn't really true. There are still risks you need to make choices on all game. The difference is the risk is based on what your opponent does, not the math. You still have to decide to poke with leftovers or not and many other things.

It is a ladder, why shouldn't the better moves win? I mean would you want your favorite sports team to go out there with equipment that fails %20 of the time on average in a championship game? Take soccer, since it is global. You want laces in the players shoes that are only %80 effective? So that on %20 of scoring chances (maybe a guy on a break away), the guy's shoe comes off? Is that what you really want to see when you are measuring the best of the best?

The issue seems to be that a lot of people have an issue with luck influencing individual games, which of course it does (and moving to pure skill wouldn't completely eliminate luck anyway, due to rock paper scissors situations). However, the idea of the ladders other than the seasonal ones is to have people play a significant number of games, so that an individual game doesn't impact your rating so much. I think a better fix for the ladders would be to increase the time it takes for games to expire and ban alts on the ladders. Either that or build in rating penalties for having insufficient games played.

Discouraging "ladder runs" in favor of more sustained ladder play would be better in my opinion, though I may be biased, since I've been on the ladder more or less continuously for the past few years.

0% SR would mean less boston raging. I wouldn't know how to entertain myself without boston raging.

I dunno, I've had plenty of Boston raging even with 0% SR...

@gnuff: western russia would've been the better option to take as first bonus. Your leftovers weren't great but good enough to ensure you get a western russia. Of course you was a bit unlucky but that loss would've been avoidable

after the starts was likely he had other russia, wasn't a good idea try russia first.

It is a ladder, why shouldn't the better moves win? I mean would you want your favorite sports team to go out there with equipment that fails %20 of the time on average in a championship game? Take soccer, since it is global. You want laces in the players shoes that are only %80 effective? So that on %20 of scoring chances (maybe a guy on a break away), the guy's shoe comes off? Is that what you really want to see when you are measuring the best of the best?

I'm not sure what the best way to analogize the 3vs2 compared to 4vs2 situation is, but this is definitely not it. Because of the ease in which you can make it 100% instead of 80% (add an extra army) it isn't comparable to football, which is also very much luck based.

I think as mentioned by Beren even though in some specific games it can hinder you outrageously, on average it will be even (even if this means playing an infinite number of games) so on average it won't affect how good you actually are. And if you wish to measure "the best of the best" just play a best of 9. The first person to win 5 games wins - which means the luck in each individual game should be counterbalanced to make it possible to decide who is better.

I think it not only makes games more interesting in terms of risk management, I think it also makes games more enjoyable compared to having to think about every single leftover and exactly how many armies the enemy has, which is tiresome to have to do every single turn to know what is happening.

please make it 0% SR, it would make the games more strategic

I think as mentioned by Beren even though in some specific games it can hinder you outrageously, on average it will be even (even if this means playing an infinite number of games) so on average it won't affect how good you actually are

Perfect, so i assume in long run i will just lose some games by luck without cannot stop it, fantastic!!!!!!
i think at least 10 out 100 games are lost by bad luck ATM.

Edited 8/11/2015 15:06:13

Here is my issue with it. Yes, it evens out at times. Let's roll with gnuff's numbers and assume %10 of games are decided by luck. Perhaps if you switched to true skill or something, it would not matter. But since you play 20 games to get ranked, someone can avoid those bad luck games. Maybe they play 16 with no real advantage/disadvantage and a couple with good luck and a couple where the opponent got bad luck. So they win 4 they should not have, maybe go 18-2 when they should have been 14-6 in a no luck world. They take #1 when they really played like a player in the 30s-50s perhaps.

Sure, it all evens out over time, but in small samples you get more variance. So while their next 80 games might be more of an indicator of their skill, they still got that trophy.

It happens on the flip side too. Someone may lose 4 games based on luck in a 20 game run and should have been much higher.

You may be fine with that scenario, personally I don't care for it. One solution is up the min amount to be ranked (as suggested), but if you do that, I bet you just get less participation on ladders in general.

My two cents:
I like the 16% and random move order, but would prefer 4 picks. 0% SR is great and I make many games with it, but it would make the ladder a bit stale and repetitive. Leaving an element of chance in is alright in my opinion, a knowledgeable player will weight the risks and accept that sometimes gambles pay off, sometimes they don't.

No-luck cyclical has no place outside of coin games.

Edited 8/11/2015 15:22:02

I'm not sure what the best way to analogize the 3vs2 compared to 4vs2 situation is, but this is definitely not it. Because of the ease in which you can make it 100% instead of 80% (add an extra army) it isn't comparable to football, which is also very much luck based.

Maybe my analogy is not the best, but I don't see how football/soccer is very much luck based. Outside the foul calls of a ref, how is it luck based? you might say a guy was in the right place at the right time, and that is luck based...but it is not. He chose to be there, whether it was the correct position or not (based on scheme). You might say the ball bounced unlucky off a foot, but it did not. Someone put their foot in that exact manner, and really just misjudged it. I mean unless weather is a factor, or the refs...I don't see luck there.

I will have to think about a better analogy. I guess I just don't like the reasoning for luck that it is a known risk, so it is fine.