Penalizing for inactivity

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Penalizing for inactivity

Post by Longhair »

I think I'd like to weigh in on penalizing teams for inactivity.

DO IT IF YOU WANT TO KILL THE LEAGUE

Seriously, don't change my team's score based on whether or not we're absent for a month or not. Hey, I have a life. My wife/family/job trumps any video game that I will ever play. If life dictates that I need to be away for a while, or can only log on to bzflag at certain, restricted times, guess what's going to lose? BZflag, of course!

I think a league should be open to whoever wants to play whenever they want to play. If you want to make sure that you have games played, start a championship or something, sort of like how the 1vs1 league works.

If the rest of my team (not speaking for TLZ specifically, but any team I'm on in general) can't get together more than once every other month, and have a score of 0 as a result, we most likely just won't bother.

If you want a league of ducati bzaddicts only, all 10 of you may as well start your own league and play each other only.
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Post by birdie »

I agree with you totally about the point that inactivity shouldnt be pushed into the teamrankings and the score
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Post by mistake »

You will find a very nice and great summary of all points made by SportChick here

very nice SC, i couldnt post compliments in that topic, so i'll do it here:)

There you will discover that basically the points you mentioned here are listed there and that many have already given good arguments why penalties for inactivity should be avoided. The general consensus from the lately posted entries seems to be drifting into the direction that a rewarding of activity is favoured over penalizing, or to have a league concept that allows stretches of inactivity.
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Post by birdie »

people are in different situations in real life mistake. For example, just to take the students out of this and explain their situation (we are with a lot). They might play more during the year, but wont play at all or hardly during exam periods. Indeed there should be done about the inactivity in general, but you cant expect from every league player to play so much every week. Some people are in situations that they can do that (maybe you to...) but others cant at all.

At the end, dont forget bzflag is a computer game and shouldnt come on the first place in peoples life.

and although some is written in other topics, i do want to say some more things to summarize my thoughts in one post so i dont have to post it in several other topics:

- a very important part of inactivity is also HoW. they used to play 50% of all matches against every possible team. But ya..the behavour of some of them made people avoiding matches with them

- bzflag didnt "grew" a lot last years, and its mostly the same people who play. But several of them just got more busy in real life, maybe lost a bit of interest, and they werent really "replaced" by a lot of new people

- if we like it or not, ME was a reason several stopped playing to. But we wont go in that discussion here

- that nothing was done at all to big jerks who mess everything up, cheaters, persons who are there when they have fun to b**** at you so you would feel bad,... but we have our council now who _should_ do something about them (soon)

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Post by Thonolan »

[longhair wrote]DO IT IF YOU WANT TO KILL THE LEAGUE

hm longhair but you agree with me that a league lifes from activity ? Would you agree that active teams get an reward to hold the league active :) ? Maybe its sound better to give active teams (who hold the league alive) a reward like a bounus system ? . Sorry for my bad english i have the same problem like birdie my english sucks :). lh i agree we all have a real life but this fact change nothing on the fact that a league attractivity depends on the activity from her members . I respect the work from all who have new ideas for our league and i apprecitate that we now in a fair discussion.
longhair hope my english is understandable i am looking forward to our next match ;).
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Post by Xell »

Thonolan wrote:[longhair wrote]DO IT IF YOU WANT TO KILL THE LEAGUE

hm longhair but you agree with me that a league lifes from activity ? Would you agree that active teams get an reward to hold the league active :) ? Maybe its sound better to give active teams (who hold the league alive) a reward like a bounus system ? . Sorry for my bad english i have the same problem like birdie my english sucks :). lh i agree we all have a real life but this fact change nothing on the fact that a league attractivity depends on the activity from her members . I respect the work from all who have new ideas for our league and i apprecitate that we now in a fair discussion.
longhair hope my english is understandable i am looking forward to our next match ;).
Thonolan
I think what Longhair meant was this:
longhair wrote:If the rest of my team (not speaking for TLZ specifically, but any team I'm on in general) can't get together more than once every other month, and have a score of 0 as a result, we most likely just won't bother.
Of course activity is the most import thing in the league, but such punishement wouldn't help in that case, Teams with players who can't play often would get frustrated and therefore leave the league, or they just wouldn't play anymore if the few points they can win would disappear anyway.
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Post by Longhair »

Xell: exactly

While yes, a league lives and dies on activity, you can't FORCE people to play. Sure, you can set all the inactivity penalties you want, but if I get another chance to go to Pakistan, or some family crisis happens, guess what? I won't be here. end of discussion. If the league can't be flexible enough to allow for this sort of thing, we're doing something wrong.

For me, being the top of the points list doesn't mean much, but I do value the ELO rating as a general sense of my team's strength. You start changing the score, and it becomes useless as an indicator of strength.

Heard this somewhere, for what it's worth:
The key to having a successful event is to make it so that people will feel like they are missing something if they don't show up.
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Post by Longhair »

By the way, I hope I don't come across as insulting. I serioiusly do respect the people in this league, even if I don't always agree. You folks are the best.
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Post by sussi »

additionals for ELO:
- weak team arn't punish for loosing matches
-high ranked teams wont get only few points (at least +24) for win against low scored teams
-teams wont loose any points if matching 4 times per week, even if they cant win a single match
- win a single match means after 1.5 mounths inactivity reaching the score as before (+24 than -(4x6) =+-0
-overall with playing few matches, teams arnt feeling the aging of score
- in 50 week (1 year) a team without any activness loose 200 points. Thats if a team is started and never played a match. That team has a whole year to start matching.
-If a team only for decoration, why schould player stay at that team?
-from 1600 to inactivity (1000) its 3 years not playing a single match
-the score with ELO shows the present strengh
-if u match only all 45 days (the current criteria to get inactiv) you lost nearly the points what u get min. (28-24=+4)
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Post by goblin »

birdie wrote:people are in different situations in real life mistake. For example, just to take the students out of this and explain their situation (we are with a lot). They might play more during the year, but wont play at all or hardly during exam periods. Indeed there should be done about the inactivity in general, but you cant expect from every league player to play so much every week. Some people are in situations that they can do that (maybe you to...) but others cant at all.
I agree. Some of us have lives to live besides BZFlag; Summer holidays, christmas buziness, taking care of a baby, illness, worklife...

As long as this is not a professional league, we should be doing it for fun.

The idea about rewarding activity (as opposed to punishing inactivity) by giving points to teams even if they lose a match is a good way to induce activity, I think.
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Post by mistake »

people are in different situations in real life mistake
I am not quite sure where I said anything against this, i even proposed solutions where this is considered.
The idea about rewarding activity (as opposed to punishing inactivity) by giving points to teams even if they lose a match is a good way to induce activity, I think.
Wasn't this what I and many others have said already......I am still thinking this was already settled at, am I wrong?
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Post by tokimi »

That was my opinion mistake... not sure how its back on the table. Here is
the list of things that we talked about on this topic:
SportChick wrote:Activity Issues:

1. Every team must match every other team twice per month. Penalty for failure to match a team: 50 points per team. (mistake)
Against: Teams should have the right to decide who to match. (birdie)
Against: If one team is willing and available, they should not be penalized if the other team fails to match. (menotume)
Against: There are some teams people don't want to match simply on principle. (kierra)
Against: People play bz for fun, and shouldn't be forced to play teams they don't like or think are nice, etc. (quantum dot)
Against: This will more likely discourage activity. (bamf.)
Against: Teams should be able to match who they want, when they want. (Mur)

.
.

5. Inactive teams should lose points until they reach 0, and then be deleted.(Ares)
For: Decreasing scores over time is a good idea. Finding a definition of "inactive" that reflects the current state of the league shouldn't be too difficult. (Admirarch)
For: It rewards activity and allows active teams to climb in the rankings. (quantum dot)
For: All teams should lose 4 points a week for not playing and become "inactive" when they drop below 100 points. All players should automatically be kicked from inactive teams. & it cannot regain active status. (sussi)
Neutral: Activity is the most important aspect in a league (Thonolan)
Against: This might make some of the older, inactive teams disappear completely.(tokimi)
Against: This means that a team that hasn't matched since long will have a low rating, though they still might be hard to beat. (mistake)
Against: In this way, only active teams can climb up in the rankings and inactive teams have no motivation. (Xell)
Against: This would kill activity completely. People DO have a life outside of bz. (longhair)
Against: Inactivity shouldn't be reflected in rankings and score. (birdie)
Against: Reward activity, don't punish inactivity (Zongo)
Against: Activity is important, but punishing inactivity will drive away players. (Xell)
Against: Removing all players from an inactive team and deleting the team does not seem fair. (tokimi)
Against: ELO is the most accurate way to judge a team's strength. Don't change it! (longhair)
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Post by sussi »

I think the aging of score isnt so bad as everybody think about.
It is not a wild river what need wildwaterrafting, its a slow not deep river. Everybody can stand where he is or can swim forward, only dead bodies drifting to the hardes side.

The present score include already a virtual aging for the score. Starting from from the need of playing in 45 days at least a match and expecting do loose some match, every team has to expect usually to loose some point during the time.
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Post by tokimi »

Right, we can aproach the idea of penalizing for inactivity, but we really do
have to consider who the players are. We have members with ages ranging
between 5 and 60, all with varrying degrees of want and avaliability. Why
would we punish inactivity then, if every one is on their own time table.
That just means we as a league are forcing people to behave in a way that
may or may not be good for individual players. That will force people to
leave!

Why shouldnt they! If there are other leagues, with no penalties for going
inactive for a while, then why should they care if they leave ducati. Just
does not make sence at all from where I am sitting
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Post by mistake »

I have to agree with Tokimi and some other posters.
A scheme that tries to force people to do something is not pointing in any good direction.
To be honest, there is ofcourse just a little difference in rewarding active teams vs to punish not very regular matching teams. But the difference is all that can make a difference for it beeing accepted or not.

If new points pop up in that direction I am all ears. But as long no new points are put forward, we already have the list above of pro and contra arguments and we should try to pull it in the same direction instead of starting from scratch every time.
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Post by goblin »

mistake wrote:But as long no new points are put forward, we already have the list above of pro and contra arguments and we should try to pull it in the same direction instead of starting from scratch every time.
Sorry for pushing the discussion back to scratch earlier :oops: . I saw the topic "Penalizing for inactivity", and just wanted to shout "No!"
If this one is parked, it's fine with me.
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Post by Talisman »

How penality for those volunaterly decide to play a game? If not parked, then tow it away I say...revolution #10
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Post by sussi »

penalty for inactivity is unwanted, but what for a reward for activity!!!
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Post by Longhair »

Rewarding for activity is basically putting a nice spin on punishing for inactivity. It's what politicians and corporate marketing departments do. If an issue is unpalatable to the general public, you call it something else.

For example, calling DRM (Digital Rights Managementl, or Digital Restrictoin Management as the free software foundation calls it) something like "Copy Limitation" wouldn't fly very well, would it? It still amounts to the same thing.

In this case, you're changing a score that is supposed to represent how strong a team is with something that has nothing to do with winning or losing matches.
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Post by mistake »

It's not about truth, not about right, not about what is good for a single player, it is about what is good for the league and how to keep the ducati league exciting and fun for the majority of the people playing in the league, as well as making it more attractive for non members to decide to play in this league.
An ELO ranking does and should represent the strength of a team. Very right and that has my support. But the question is not if that is right or wrong, but if the strength of a team should be the only criteria for evaluating teams and standings. I don't think putting that question in league discussion is unjust or wrong just because some single player decided not to match often. Teamrating is hardly effected by a single member beeing away some times, a team consists out of many more players, average is about 8 members, or around 4-6 active members. Unless you object for your teammates to play matches when you are gone, I don't see why your persistence in trying to keep the ELO rating as only measurement of a teams participation in a league, or why you insist that high activity should not be honored in some way at all. I really think that adding more views for rating a teams participation is a big benefit compared to keeping everything as it is now.
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Post by SportChick »

I think that the suggestion for seasonal ladder, which are independent of (and in addition to) ELO is a good alternative. I think the initial suggestions of penalizing for inactivity or rewarding activity through modification of ELO have been mostly abandoned for the idea of a seasonal ladder.

To the extent you are proposing the modification of ELO instead of a seasonal ladder, please make that clear in your response. Otherwise, we will presume you are arguing for modification of ELO in addition to using a seasonal ladder.
Last edited by SportChick on Thu Jun 22, 2006 4:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Not just spin

Post by goblin »

Longhair wrote:Rewarding for activity is basically putting a nice spin on punishing for inactivity.
I disagree on more than one level.

Implementation level:
Defining activity is easy; You play a match -> you're active.
Defining inactivity is hard; You don't play a match you're inactive, right? Wrong! You have to set a time period (eg. a month) and a number of matches you have to play in order not to be inactive (eg 8 ). Then Ducati council will have to defend the period and the amount of matches day in and day out, because some people go on holidays, some people argue that the frequency of activity has to be higher, others lower.

Human psychology level:
If you want to catch working bees, use honey. If you use sh*t, you'll only catch flies.
Since points are not a scarce resource, I think that we should appeal to the positive side of peoples minds by rewarding them for doing what we want them to do. Threatening people with a whip in order to make them active cannot be good.

So IMHO, it's not just a question of wording or "spin".

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Post by [dmp] »

I tend to agree with longhair on this.

If you got teams a, b, c, d. And you reward teams a and b for benig ative, how does this differ from punishing teams c and d for being inactive? The end result is the same: The active teams will have more points than the inactive ones. You might even say, the inactive teams are punished as they do not get the bonus as the active teams does.

If its easy to define active, why is it hard to define inactive? Do we have a 3rd state? Otherwise I would say, that inactive is defined as being not active.

But I think its the wrong approach. The score is a attempt at rating the skill-level. Mixing this with activity will make the score evem more arbitrary than today. I kinda like the current solution where teams are seperated into two: active and inactive ones. And I doubt that people does not play because of the points (once they have gotten past the rollercoaster ride as a new team, going from 1200 to approx. 1000, before going up again). If people think its fun to play, they will play. Giving more points for playing wont change much in activity amoung teams. It will change how teams are listed however. And that leads me back to why i dont like rewarding activity.

And if you remember IST, they actually rewarded activity, making the best team the one that played most (here larger teams are a huge win, because there is more players to match with - do we want large teams? I'll prefer more smaller teams).

How much do we want to change "may the best team win" into "may the active team win" ? Active teams get experience by playing. Who have not felt rusty after a break from BZFlag? This is, imho, the real reward/punishment for being active/inactive. Getting back and see that you need to fight to re-gain your position as a strong team might fuel more matches. However, if you already know that most of them didnt get better, they just got more points for being active, would that be a motivating factor? You cannot really see which team got better compared to teams that just plays alot - except if you begin to lookup what matches they played and the result of them.
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Post by sussi »

Always good arguments [dmp], I see the problem as well, that some teams able to manipulate their score (under activity rewarded ELO) by playing many matches while change loose and winner side.

But your argument: that a team/player felt rusty after a period of inactivness, is a good argument for using of a activity rawerded ELO, where inactive teams loosing score.

It seems that the present score not show the rating of the skill-level fully correctly (atleast itz needs a couple of matches to finding correctly values). It's a big gap between the leading 3 (18., 17,16. hundret)and the next teams at the 13-hundret level.

I agree that only a activity score is a bad idea.
Maybe we can use a mixed skill-acivity level to score the single players rating. I like chestals idea about personal score. If we know who played the match, it could be possible to calculate a personal score based of the average score of the opponent players. The same script/rules as now, his own score and add personal score from the opponents divided by their number.
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Post by goblin »

[dmp] wrote:If its easy to define active, why is it hard to define inactive?
Because nobody plays 24 hours a day - everybody is "inactive" from time to time. Do you want to punish everybody for being inactive while sleeping? I imagine not.

As stated before, you'll have to decide when to call a team inactive. And you'll have to decide on the level of inactivity. It's much easier to decide when people are active, since activity means action, and actions can be measured instantly.

Activity/inactivity isn't boolean, so inactive=not active actually doesn't make much sense. There are degrees of activity. In the extreme, you might even define "joining the league" as showing activity.

And since activity is way easier to define and measure than inactivity, and since you yourself stated that punishing inactivity doesn't differ from rewarding activity, I can't see why it's so important to you that inactivity is punished instead of rewarding activity :?:

What do you prefer yourself:
:arrow: Go to work, or we'll kick you in the crutch :evil:
:arrow: Go to work, and we'll pay you money :D

Reward and punishment are two different means, with more than a symbolic difference.

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