Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Meta commentary

I’m already very satisfied with that we pretty much all agree with that I would’ve won, had I not done the Blogger-steal scam sloppily, so I don’t mind making public commentary right now as if the game was already over (but if I can actually opt to win for real too then that’s also nice to have lol). Also, I’m tired lol.

From the development of things (with us pretty much agreeing that I have won my four Final Bowl Matches 13-0) currently only me, Card and Sphinx can win the game.

Due to that I have maximum Final Bowl Points, nobody with more Starting Cash than me can win the game (from a casual reading of the rules. Perhaps there is a scam out there, I don’t know).

That means that Matt and PSS can’t win.
The only people who COULD win are Sphinx, Card and Me.

It’s pretty much up to total subjective choice (or secret informal deals), what Matt/PSS agree to do with their resources to leverage the other players which could win.
I’ve offered Matt one of my gods, Hyphenicus (to lower the points card and Sphinx would earn against him), and he has declined, unfortunately.

However it can all be trumped if card and Sphinx just agree to a Coin-flip victory among themselves to opt for doing the same God-maker scam I did (one of them becoming the benefactor and the other the meatpuppet), to net themselves an obscene amount of points via matches. Which would be a least a win against Matt, who has unfortunately declined my God offer (which I have done to try to counter this situation, and even then, they could just Godmaker an even bigger dude), and the Meatpuppet, meaning at least 26 points. Which divided by either’s starting cash, is more than enough to achieve victory.

That known, I’m going to make a proposal which stems from that to save us the time and trouble. Or card/Sphinx can just choose for the less optimal choice of competing against each other and not follow the instructions of this whistle-blowing, which will lower their overall chances of winning (but perhaps make them happier/more satisfied I guess). Whatever floats your boat. I don’t mind either way.

posted by Madrid at 17 May 2017 18:13:00 UTC Comments (5)

Comments

Sphinx:

18-05-2017 08:56:28 UTC

You say that the coinflip is a better play for card and me, but I disagree in multiple ways.

First, from a strictly probabilistic point of view, I’d estimate card’s team to have a very significantly higher than 50% chance of winning, since I need to make more than double the points he gets, and in the state the teams are reset to, his team loses against the Bear, but has a very strong matchup vs PSS and Matt. Since the Bloggers can’t be changed anymore, this isn’t likely to change.

Having said that, obviously in theory a 50/50 coinflip would be a better chance of winning for me. It would also be pointless and arbitrary.

This is under the assumption that the “Godmaker” loophole would violate the “No Manager can change the state of any Blogger during the Final Bowl.” Rule, which I think it does since it’s based on changing the employment state of a Blogger. That’s actually kind of ambiguous, but I don’t really mind, in that case it comes down to who trades bloggers with who, which is still more interesting than a coinflip.

Also I enjoy the Bloggsball rules we thought up and would like to see some matches being played.

Oracular rufio:

18-05-2017 23:46:07 UTC

I think this is the fundamental problem here.  Cuddlebeam only cares about winning, they don’t care about actually playing the game at all.

card:

19-05-2017 05:41:54 UTC

[Sphinx] Currently I do yes.
The Godmaker thing is now gone because Bloggers can’t level up from trading. But I’d argue that which team a Blogger is on is part of both the Manager and Blogger’s state. Blogger X is on Team X and Manager X employs Blogger X. At the very least it’s part of the Blogger’s state given “Information about Bloggers, including which Manager employs them”

[Oracular rufio] That is an interesting point. I showed this game and Nomic in general to a friend of mine who likes playing games and it challenged their definition of what a game is, since at the time the ruleset had no victory conditions and the closest game they’ve played to Nomic is Fluxx or Mao.

They usually try for the most optimal move mechanically when playing. I know that doing something suboptimally may not guarantee me a win, but winning isn’t always a goal of mine (or even the best goal for most games, since the reward is usually “You Win!” and then it ends), even in games that aren’t Nomic. Take DnD or other similar role playing games, there’s no “win condition” but the game has a start and an end, which can vary from a single session to many campaigns.

People like Cuddlebeam and my friend probably see most games as linear, with predetermined win conditions such as pong, which ends after a certain difference of points. Nomic is something more sandbox like Conway’s Game of Life which you can’t win but could set goals for yourself to enjoy playing it.

Madrid:

19-05-2017 12:18:29 UTC

fffuuuUUUCKK I LOVE THESE DISCUSSION POINTS. It brings us back to that “types of players” super topic brought up “Plays” back in Viv’s.

Yeah, as card has illustrated, I’m very much a Johnny-Spike player as per MTG’s “player types” system: http://mtg.gamepedia.com/Player_type

Oracular rufio:

19-05-2017 16:46:46 UTC

Honestly, I think most people aim to win or at least do well.  But people like Cuddle beam don’t care about that, only about winning at all costs.  They often become sore losers, and sore winners.  I doubt they would get any enjoyment just from playing.