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Director of Operations
By JeBuS (Brian S)
 - Director of Operations
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1E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#556939
My question is: what is the downside to allowing both players to play an equal number of turns?

I have yet to hear a logical argument for not having equal number of turns that doesn't come down to "because we don't".
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Online OP Coordinator
By pfti (Jon Carter)
 - Online OP Coordinator
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2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#556940
JeBuS wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 8:59 pm
pfti wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 8:47 pm I am saying the idea of two equal players should make a tie is a myth a in a game with randomness. If we want a perfect game to win, we should be able to stack decks and prohibit random draws.

Right now ELO is a reasonable predictor of outcome, which suggests that for most players if you go first or second doesnt usually change outcome (but there is sill a chance for upset which makes things fun).

Basically, I am asking for a better argument than saying that a hypothetical, but impossible situation, should result in a tie.
Like I said, it seems like an indefensible position to state that all other things being equal, one player must lose.

There have been times where I've won the game, simply because I went first. I know the opponent would have scored more points than me on their next turn, if they were afforded it.

I've also been on the flip side of that, where I know I could have won if I was afforded the same number of turns as my opponent.

The players aren't playing by the same rules. One player is playing a game where they can win if they do everything right. Another player is playing a game where they will lose if they do everything right, but their opponent also does everything right.
There will never be a game where all things are equal. There is never a game where a player will do everything right (unless they are cheating and know dilemmas and their draws in advance). In every game that the turn order might affect things so too can the deck shuffle, the order missions came up, etc.. You can never exclusively say the outcome of one game is because of turn order. We can talk about broad trends, but to make any arguments that an individual game should be predictable in any universe ignores fundamental game mechanics.

Chess is a bad analogy for this game because there are too many random factors in this game that do not exist in chess.


This is a game of deckbuilding, chance and play decisions. Make arguments based on proof of imbalance, not some hope that a perfect game that can never happen should result in a tie. if we have data that proves on ballance across games that is a good argument. Anecdotal data-based single games where you could of won with equal turns doesnt because we dont know if your chance to win next turn was because of the flip, or the draws, or the seed phase, etc. A perfect game is literally imposable as long as there is random chance, so lets not argue for a platonic ideal. Lets try to ballance trends.

I am not saying your goal is bad, I am saying your argument for it is.
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Online OP Coordinator
By pfti (Jon Carter)
 - Online OP Coordinator
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2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#556941
JeBuS wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 9:12 pm My question is: what is the downside to allowing both players to play an equal number of turns?

I have yet to hear a logical argument for not having an equal number of turns that doesn't come down to "because we don't".
if i make a mistake that costs me a turn, it lets me come back. For every "perfect game" that this balances, it will allow an imperfect game another turn to win.

I can point to any number of games where if I made a better play I could have won a turn before, meaning another turn would let me do all sorts of point-scoring.

Also it incentivises making a deck that hits 99 points, then just holds out to run up the score on a a super turn.

it creates no less equality, just changes who is penalized for what mistakes (since every game has mistakes of either chance or choice)
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Online OP Coordinator
By pfti (Jon Carter)
 - Online OP Coordinator
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2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#556942
JeBuS wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 9:12 pm My question is: what is the downside to allowing both players to play an equal number of turns?

I have yet to hear a logical argument for not having equal number of turns that doesn't come down to "because we don't".
Also argument theory places the burden of proof on change. You have to prove the alternative is definitivle better than the status quo because we know what happens in teh status quo, but change without proof of a better outcome jus invites random problems. so actually the logical argument is because we dont, unless you can prove the alternative is definitivly better.
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Director of Operations
By JeBuS (Brian S)
 - Director of Operations
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1E Deep Space 9 Regional Champion 2023
#556943
pfti wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 9:14 pm There will never be a game where all things are equal. There is never a game where a player will do everything right (unless they are cheating and know dilemmas and their draws in advance). In every game that the turn order might affect things so too can the deck shuffle, the order missions came up, etc.. You can never exclusively say the outcome of one game is because of turn order. We can talk about broad trends, but to make any arguments that an individual game should be predictable in any universe ignores fundamental game mechanics.

Chess is a bad analogy for this game because there are too many random factors in this game that do not exist in chess.


This is a game of deckbuilding, chance and play decisions. Make arguments based on proof of imbalance, not some hope that a perfect game that can never happen should result in a tie. if we have data that proves on ballance across games that is a good argument. Anecdotal data-based single games where you could of won with equal turns doesnt because we dont know if your chance to win next turn was because of the flip, or the draws, or the seed phase, etc. A perfect game is literally imposable as long as there is random chance, so lets not argue for a platonic ideal. Lets try to ballance trends.

I am not saying your goal is bad, I am saying your argument for it is.
It is because no such "all things being equal" game can occur that we must start from logical premises, rather than data-based premises. If one cannot establish a baseline because of factors that cannot be controlled, one must remove all such factors and make a logical hypothesis based on that.

We cannot control for player skill or luck. Therefore, we must remove both to come to a workable hypothesis. Thus, the "all things being equal" example.
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Online OP Coordinator
By pfti (Jon Carter)
 - Online OP Coordinator
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2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#556946
"all things being equal" is not logical because it cannot measure an actual game.

You are asking to use an impossible standard to dictate how the game should work.

Even the same person played the same deck against themselves, there would never be a game where both players had an identicall chance of wining given an equal number of turns.
This is the problem with "logic" it ask us to ignore the real world for an imaginary standard that cannot exist. As Aristotle notes, logic and probibility are different types of argument and should not be conflated. Because this is a game of chance, logic cannot be used to measure things. Logic deals in absolutes, trek (as a game)-- by definition-- cannot.

use probability and trends to make your arguments because a perfect game state cannot exist and your appeals to logic ignore the reality of the game. We could have a game that is logcally consistant, but in pracice never works that way. We should look at the data, not some assumption based on imposible worlds
 
By Kova4H9
 - Alpha Quadrant
 -  
#556965
I think some people are getting a bit hung up on the "perfectly equal decks/player" thing, which is- as has been stated numerous times- a hypothetical that we can't really locate concretely in the real world. This is why I rephrased it as, "How much better does Player 2 need to perform to win?" This way we're not looking at "exactly equal" decks, but instead looking at varying degrees of difference of performance. Of course, "performance" is quite a wobbly term, so maybe this still isn't useful enough.

I think if we wanted to catalog the first player advantage as concretely as possible, my suggestion would be to track the following data:

1. What percent of games does the first player win? (It may seem obvious, but it has some hidden problems too.)
2. Of the games where the second player wins, how did the decks rank overall in the tournament? (Even better data would be, how did the decks rank overall in the tournament if you exclude that game?)

The first question is flawed because, as has been pointed out, when there is a significant enough difference in performance, turn order won't matter as much, so assuming a random match up of deck qualities, only a fraction of the games' outcomes will be decided by first-turn advantage. However, the exact size of that fraction is of interest.

The second question gets at, "How much better does player 2 need to be to win on the second turn?" If we look at overall tournament standings, this gives us a general idea about the relative quality of the decks... but these are obviously impacted by the game in which Player 2 beat Player 1. This is why it would be useful to exclude the game in question.

But, to be honest, how much does this part matter? I mean, do we need to statistically prove that the 1st Player advantage is significant enough to warrant a rules change before local-variant playtesting begins to test solutions? Or would it be best to start testing out proposed solutions and see if they really do make games/tournaments more fair?

(P.S. I saw somewhere the line, "How different is a dice roll from a 1-6 random personnel selection?" The difference is, the player chooses the away team that goes into the attempt, and their opponent chooses to seed a dilemma that has a random selection. There is agency in that situation. There is no agency in a die roll.)
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By Ausgang (Gerald Sieber)
 - Beta Quadrant
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1E European Continental Quarter-Finalist 2023
#556998
Bottom line is, we need more data. But I'd rather extend data gathering to see whether an equal-turn-model would have made a difference. Time permitting during a tournament, players could just simulate the extra "equal-turn" after a full victory is achieved (just to see).

Data should basically track the following questions:
  1. Who went first?
  2. Who won the game?
  3. Was there an extra turn to make up for equal turns? (maybe not necessary, since it's implied with the first question)
  4. Who won the game after the extra turn?
I would track such data for German Nationals if everyone there agrees to participate.
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Online OP Coordinator
By pfti (Jon Carter)
 - Online OP Coordinator
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2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#557004
I will also note that if we are really concerned about this, the real answer is making sure players get an equal number of times going first and second in major tournaments. It makes pairing a pain, but it mitigates impact over the course of a tournament.

This is standard practice in debate, which is a better analogy for trek than chess and has a historical bias towards the aff (team that goes first). The goal becomes to do better than the trends, instead ot to rememdy it.
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By Mogh, Son Of Worf (Meinhard S. Rohr)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
1E Swedish National Champion 2018
#557005
Ausgang wrote: Wed Jun 30, 2021 1:46 am Bottom line is, we need more data. But I'd rather extend data gathering to see whether an equal-turn-model would have made a difference. Time permitting during a tournament, players could just simulate the extra "equal-turn" after a full victory is achieved (just to see).

Data should basically track the following questions:
  1. Who went first?
  2. Who won the game?
  3. Was there an extra turn to make up for equal turns? (maybe not necessary, since it's implied with the first question)
  4. Who won the game after the extra turn?
I would track such data for German Nationals if everyone there agrees to participate.
Why do we need the third and fourth? They actually requires do keep on playing for no purpose and we will never get enough data / participants for that. Also it would require to already implement a mode for the catchup turn (do we allow the first player to continue to make it harder for the first player? Do we just score ties when both players reach victory conditions?).

On the other hand, the first and second could be easily tracked across several tournaments without much additional effort and then someone can decide whether action is necessary.

We need a good sample size for this, not some anecdotal evidence from 10 games, skewed by the specific decks that were played that day.
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By Mogh, Son Of Worf (Meinhard S. Rohr)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
1E Swedish National Champion 2018
#557006
boromirofborg wrote: Tue Jun 29, 2021 4:19 pm Sure. And I think it's very unlikely, don't get me wrong. As someone running touraments for various games over the years, I can say that the oil flip of pregame is still preferable on many levels, because the players won't notice it the same way. Where ties tend to be as much of a feel bad as a loss when it comes to torment rankings, except now it's two players that feel bad instead of one.
Yeah, I understand that ties feel way worse than other alternatives. I only proposed ties since the other proposals for "additional turns" sounded even worse to me. I also do not think that we should have an additional turn. If there is enough data to support that going first is an x% advantage, then there should be something in-game to make x smaller.
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Online OP Coordinator
By pfti (Jon Carter)
 - Online OP Coordinator
 -  
2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#557008
Mogh, Son Of Worf wrote: Wed Jun 30, 2021 2:49 am
Ausgang wrote: Wed Jun 30, 2021 1:46 am Bottom line is, we need more data. But I'd rather extend data gathering to see whether an equal-turn-model would have made a difference. Time permitting during a tournament, players could just simulate the extra "equal-turn" after a full victory is achieved (just to see).

Data should basically track the following questions:
  1. Who went first?
  2. Who won the game?
  3. Was there an extra turn to make up for equal turns? (maybe not necessary, since it's implied with the first question)
  4. Who won the game after the extra turn?
I would track such data for German Nationals if everyone there agrees to participate.
Why do we need the third and fourth? They actually requires do keep on playing for no purpose and we will never get enough data / participants for that. Also it would require to already implement a mode for the catchup turn (do we allow the first player to continue to make it harder for the first player? Do we just score ties when both players reach victory conditions?).

On the other hand, the first and second could be easily tracked across several tournaments without much additional effort and then someone can decide whether action is necessary.

We need a good sample size for this, not some anecdotal evidence from 10 games, skewed by the specific decks that were played that day.
You might also see what happens when you control for comparative rating/win percentage
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By Mogh, Son Of Worf (Meinhard S. Rohr)
 - Delta Quadrant
 -  
1E Swedish National Champion 2018
#557009
pfti wrote: Wed Jun 30, 2021 3:06 am You might also see what happens when you control for comparative rating/win percentage
This is true, but I think it would not matter if the sample size is large enough since then these effects would even out and you would get at least a reasonable estimate.
If you have a smaller sample size, you need to look into that - but of course it then requires to record more attributes of the games and makes the analysis harder. Also, while you could take historical data for player win percentage, you would also somehow need to have something for the specific decks then. And then it becomes quite messy.
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Online OP Coordinator
By pfti (Jon Carter)
 - Online OP Coordinator
 -  
2E Cardassia Regional Champion 2023
#557010
Yeah specific decks is impossible, but the other numbers would help make a limited sample size more meaningful (as would forcing the same deck to have an equal number of times going first and second -- as this would help control for deck varriance)
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