Revamped Stage Picking System That Can Work With Bigger Stage Lists

[Necro'lic]

So me and BLVolition were trying to work through a better and simpler stage pick system than the admittedly brilliant, if flawed, one he came up with in this thread. As such, I will credit him for about 90% of this idea. The last 10% contribution is what made me think this was worth sharing, since I think we've found a pretty darn airtight stage picking system that is not only simple and fair, but doesn't take too much time. This is the ruleset for stage picking for this system:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IF OVERALL SCORE FOR THE SET IS EQUAL (i.e. 0-0, 1-1, 2-2):

1. One of the two players will choose out of one of the legal stages
2. Second player will either agree or disagree to the picker's stage
3. If they disagree, that stage will be struck out of the list
4. Second player now becomes the picker and picks a not struck stage
5. Repeat until an agreement has been met or all stages but one are struck

IF OVERALL SCORE FOR THE SET IS UNEQUAL (i.e. 0-1, 1-2):

1. Loser of the last round will pick the next stage

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So the biggest change with this system is no starter/counterpick dichotomy. Like BLVolition says in his long post, this dichotomy has little objective basis at all, and the system put in place here will actually allow both players to find the most suitable "neutral" stage between each other, rather than this nebulous term we try to put on stages overall. And I do say neutral, because both players HAVE to agree on this stage to play it, so it will be neutral by definition, unless one of the players intentionally gimps themselves for some reason, but that's not really a problem with the system itself.

On another note, the maximum time it takes to fully pick a stage is based only on the hypothetical condition that neither player can agree to anything, in which case, a potential disadvantage could take place at this last choice since neither player chose it technically. This gives incentive to both players to not simply say no to everything and waste time.

Now with the system for picking neutral stages set, how do we counterpick? I proposed to simply have an unabated loser's pick during the rounds they are behind in score. This seems extreme, but not only is completely fine, compared to our current system it actually is LESS in the loser's favor, but not too much to be superfluous.

To compare it to the old system, this is actually worse for the loser in a technical sense. Why? Well note that in the starter/counterpick system, the counterpicks basically are off limits to winners. They cannot pick them ever. However, nothing is offlimits to the losers; they can choose both neutral and counterpicks. So if we compare starter/counterpick system's loser vs the new system's loser, they would be in the exact same advantage. However, if we compare the difference between loser and non-loser in the neutral stages of both systems, the old system has a bigger difference, because at least in this new system, the first picker can actually ACCESS the hypothetical counterpick stages regularly.

In short, this new loser's pick/counterpick stage is not only simpler, but it actually ends up being more fair overall for both parties compared to the old system.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hopefully we get some good feedback from this idea. Feel free to post to me or BLVolition . We'd love to hear your thoughts. But again, he's the one who thought up most of this, so direct any praise towards him more than me.

 

[Necro'lic]

Shameless bump. I want people to at least see this before it gets sent to the forums abyss.

 

[wenzday]

So me and BLVolition were trying to work through a better and simpler stage pick system than the admittedly brilliant, if flawed, one he came up with in this thread. As such, I will credit him for about 90% of this idea. The last 10% contribution is what made me think this was worth sharing, since I think we've found a pretty darn airtight stage picking system that is not only simple and fair, but doesn't take too much time. This is the ruleset for stage picking for this system:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

IF OVERALL SCORE FOR THE SET IS EQUAL (i.e. 0-0, 1-1, 2-2):

1. One of the two players will choose out of one of the legal stages
2. Second player will either agree or disagree to the picker's stage
3. If they disagree, that stage will be struck out of the list
4. Second player now becomes the picker and picks a not struck stage
5. Repeat until an agreement has been met or all stages but one are struck

IF OVERALL SCORE FOR THE SET IS UNEQUAL (i.e. 0-1, 1-2):

1. Loser of the last round will pick the next stage

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So the biggest change with this system is no starter/counterpick dichotomy. Like BLVolition says in his long post, this dichotomy has little objective basis at all, and the system put in place here will actually allow both players to find the most suitable "neutral" stage between each other, rather than this nebulous term we try to put on stages overall. And I do say neutral, because both players HAVE to agree on this stage to play it, so it will be neutral by definition, unless one of the players intentionally gimps themselves for some reason, but that's not really a problem with the system itself.

On another note, the maximum time it takes to fully pick a stage is based only on the hypothetical condition that neither player can agree to anything, in which case, a potential disadvantage could take place at this last choice since neither player chose it technically. This gives incentive to both players to not simply say no to everything and waste time.

Now with the system for picking neutral stages set, how do we counterpick? I proposed to simply have an unabated loser's pick during the rounds they are behind in score. This seems extreme, but not only is completely fine, compared to our current system it actually is LESS in the loser's favor, but not too much to be superfluous.

To compare it to the old system, this is actually worse for the loser in a technical sense. Why? Well note that in the starter/counterpick system, the counterpicks basically are off limits to winners. They cannot pick them ever. However, nothing is offlimits to the losers; they can choose both neutral and counterpicks. So if we compare starter/counterpick system's loser vs the new system's loser, they would be in the exact same advantage. However, if we compare the difference between loser and non-loser in the neutral stages of both systems, the old system has a bigger difference, because at least in this new system, the first picker can actually ACCESS the hypothetical counterpick stages regularly.

In short, this new loser's pick/counterpick stage is not only simpler, but it actually ends up being more fair overall for both parties compared to the old system.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Hopefully we get some good feedback from this idea. Feel free to post to me or BLVolition . We'd love to hear your thoughts. But again, he's the one who thought up most of this, so direct any praise towards him more than me.

Yeah this is a great idea. Gets rid of any randomness and is actually backed by objective reasoning. This def needs to be implemented.