46:31
(+32)
Daenerys Targaryen:
Daenerys and Drogon go on a third strafing run, flying over the river and targeting Jaime Lannister's position.
(Kill of Unnamed Character)
dgallant75 likes this
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1 soldier who didn't cross the street in time - http://imgur.com/vfY9LdQ
5 guys who get smoked three frames later - http://imgur.com/cJV1cpM
1 soldier in the line of fire - http://imgur.com/d4LCv5s
9 bodies charred to utter ash - http://imgur.com/ChQXd2X
Full screencap log of Drogon kills - http://imgur.com/gallery/2zESi -nyan
jgiuliano and kimberly.ramia like this -
The 9 bodies were presumably the ones that just got charred from the blast that we already counted. I see you actively avoided counting the same bodies twice by only counting bodies once per blast, so why count them when we don't see them burnt by a blast? -hkeseyan
vjdev2015 likes this -
There was one instance of actively avoiding a recount, which was on the very first blast when Daenerys breaks the line. We got two wide shots for that one that seemed to more or less cover everyone in the blast, and some of the subsequent shots for that one were clearly repeats of soldiers in the initial blast.
Each of the shots afterwards, were harder to say. Drogon does several passes where he shoots fire in the background with no visible bodies (e.g. while Bronn is running through the battlefield), and things get chaotic. I don't know that these 9 were definitively the same as any 9 we had seen from earlier (you'll see the other bodies counted here only total to 7 anyway). But if anyone can match these up somehow (unique armor maybe), we could discount it.
Alternately if people feel that the soldiers in the aftermath of the first blast should be counted anyway, I can buy that argument and count those too. -nyan
Woodez likes this -
But you also can't definitely say that those were 9 that they hadn't shown before. If we look at how other things are scored, you need to see proof that something is 2 separate events in order to count that act twice in the case of ambiguity. (1) When someone drinks from a glass of wine twice in the same scene, with a cut in between drinks, and we cannot see wine level, we assume it is one drink and do not count it unless we see more wine being poured. (2) In sexual activity, in between cut scenes we assume only one sex act, just line last episode when Cersei performs oral on Jaime then we see them in bed later, after they possibly had sex multiple times all night, but it was counted as one event -hkeseyan
emilien.raggi, silas.wheeler.iii, vjdev2015 like this -
I agree for all the burning bodies and the ashes, unless we know for sure that those are not the same as previously burned, (and we can't know) we shouldn't count them -emilien.raggi
hkeseyan, silas.wheeler.iii, vjdev2015 like this -
hkeseyan makes a great point. -silas.wheeler.iii
hkeseyan likes this -
I agree there is no way to know for sure if those were repeat characters in some instances. That being said Danh clearly burned to death over 300 people (which is 600 points)and thats being conservative. If anyone has suggestions on how to more accuratley score this then im all ears. If not i think this is the fairest way to be accurate and still give Dany he deserved points for burning an entire army. -hindsight44
kimberly.ramia likes this -
@hindsight44 170+ points is not enough deserved points? -hkeseyan
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If you think she only killed 85 people then yes its enough. Again im not saying this is the most perfect way to determine exactly how many people were killed, Im saying that all things considered its a fair and smart way to calculate an event like this and unless there is a clear cut much more accurate way to score this i think this is fine. -hindsight44
kimberly.ramia likes this -
The accurate way is to score it like every single other thing else - if there is a good reason to believe that an event may not have occurred, we do not score it. If there was good enough reason to think that Olenna and Tyene have not died yet, then there is good enough reason to believe that those bodies burning/turned to ash were already counted in the previous dragon breath blasts. Even in the scoring of other kills in this exact same event, duplicate kills were avoided because it was reasonably assumed that those may likely be the same bodies being shown twice. -hkeseyan
vjdev2015 likes this -
I would say that the fantasy game should not be regarded as a sensible or equitable scoring system. The rules were created piecemeal, and originally mostly from whatever the best ideas I could think up. And mostly they were based on a question, "what would be fun for viewers to watch for/stat track?" So that's how the wine rule came about for example - if we wanted to be more accurate to how much each character drank, it'd be better to count up any time they held a glass, because why else would they be holding it? But as a viewer/fantasy player it makes the scene more interesting, as you watch Cersei hold a glass throughout a conversation and wonder will-she-or-wont-she.
So as a fantasy league player, is it more entertaining to see every body and imagine the kills being racked up? Personally I like the closeup scenes better and if we only count one I'd rather use those numbers than the big crowds - no viewers are counting that there are 33 Lannister soldiers trying to hold a line against dragonfire without freeze framing, but a viewer can appreciate a close up of five burning Lannister soldiers in real time.
With respect to logical consistency, I think it works out if you assume that every burning person was counted, *unless* there was evidence that we saw them burning before. That was applied to the burning soldiers after the line was broken - in the subsequent shots we're seeing the same formation and Drogon hits only one spot, so you can assume these are the same soldiers. Similarly there's a shot at the end of the first strafe (the "landscape" shot) where we see it again in an alternate angle and Jaime strides up - it's the exactly same wagon shown twice, so none of those were counted. All the other ones are very generic battlefield shots, so with no evidence to discount them, they were counted as new kills. -nyan
jake.kmiech, Woodez, Lem Lemoncake, rajatnigam like this -
@hkseyan is there good reason to believe dany didnt kill 300+ people? No she clearly did which means it needs to scored according to you. how do you suggest we score this event in a way that fairly gives points to Dany for destroying an army? -hindsight44
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There are 3 stages of burning that we see the soldiers in: being lit up by the dragon's breath, running around on fire, and then turning to ash. It follows logically that the soldiers that turned to ash were once on fire, and the soldiers on fire were once lit on fire by dragon breath. Does it have to be hard proof that this is showing the same soldiers at different stages of incineration? Why not require hard proof that these are new soldiers? That's how we score everything else. I don't see how it is logically consistent that we assume something is counted unless evidence is presented, when like I said, every other scenario we treat the opposite way. The one caveat with unnamed soldiers in a large battle is that we assume an act of violence against one leads to their death unless proven otherwise - and their death is not being challenged here, but the act itself.
As a fantasy league player, it is not entertaining at all to see someone run up a score, especially when there is reasonable doubt whether or not they should receive that score. Those are the types of things that make people give up playing fantasy games.
With respect to someone watching the show and thinking about their fantasy score - would anyone with Daenerys be watching this episode and be disappointed that she only killed 100 people on screen rather than 2000, and not be having fun? I would say it would be incredibly selfish if they did. Especially if all they had to do was win a dice roll to draft a lady with a dragon as the first pick.
I still don't understand why we are treating the burden of proof differently in this scene than everywhere else. -hkeseyan
vjdev2015 likes this -
the burden of proof is different because she clearly killed more people than shes getting credit for and this is the most logical way to score an event like this. Again i ask you what is a better way to score this where dany gets credit of killing an army clearly larger than 300 people? and there is no good reason to believe she didnt kill that many people so according to you this needs to be scored. -hindsight44
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@hindsight44 is there reason to believe Jaime, Bronn, Dickon, and Randyl killed 0 people while taking Higharden? is there reason to believe Wun Wun didn't kill more than 8 people at the Battle of the Bastards? is there reason to believe Stannis and Ramsay only kill 2 soldiers in their battle? there's an understanding here that kills are only awarded to deaths caused by acts shown on screen, how else to fairly score it? why else does Nathan go through every week and count bodies in screenshots? because we can't just score competitive games by having one scorekeeper say "ohhh, this guy deserves approximately 600 points here" -hkeseyan
vjdev2015 likes this -
@hkeseyan you're not wrong about any of this. It's entirely possible that some of the soldiers we see are repeats. It's also very possible that they are all unique and independent. We're talking about ~30 questionable repeats among 1000s of soldiers that participate in the battle. Fire also spreads on its own, beyond the initial blast radius.
I do think you're right that in this particular scenario, nobody really cares whether Dany ends up with 240 or 180pts. But the precedent is important for scoring other battle scenes, and trying to use "assume kills are repeats unless we see explicit uniqueness" is problematic.
This one is a bit easier to handwave because there many, many more small-people-in-the-fireblast kills than burning kills or burned kills. But that can't always be assumed to be the case. Imagine if we were presented with battle scenes that featured:
* 1 fireblast shot that kills 10 soldiers.
* Close-ups of 30 soldiers on fire.
* A wide (but not comprehensive) shot of 100 bodies in a field.
How do you determine which were the duplicates in this case? Do we need to examine and categorize each type of kill, and then take a max() of the highest kill type?
If you take a look at Battle of the Blackwater, this is how they scene played out - there were actually zero bodies shown in the initial explosion, an everything had to be counted from burning people or burned bodies. -nyan
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@hindsight44 re the "she obviously killed way more than 100" argument, generally my sentiment is the same as @hkeseyan in that the characters are awarded for what they've done onscreen. So I'd rather put in place a consistent scoring and counting method rather than hedge towards what people are feeling is truer to a speculated number (since that can go both ways for each event, it's not a reliable way to score things). -nyan
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the difference between every example you used and dany is that is proof on screen of her killing those people. its a false equivalency.we arent speculating she killed all those people we saw it which means its point worthy. -hindsight44
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@nyan Let's get technical about the situation... The Lannisters are lined up in a very long and thin phalanx formation to presumably protect the wagons (I was sort of surprised that Jaime and the other important folks are just chilling on their horses with only about 3 soldiers deep of cover, with mounted bloodriders charging full speed at them - and haven't they seen 300, a phalanx's strength comes in forcing your enemy to fight in a bottleneck and preventing a break in the phalanx, but I digress)
Drogon comes in perpendicular to the formation, burning through a line of only about 3 Lannisters deep. Dany then proceeds to guide Drogon specifically to burn the wagons, instead of burning the ENTIRE LINE of Lannister forces adjacent to the wagons. These events show that she is not deliberately burning as many bodies as she can - she is causing fear, breaking the phalanx, and destroying suppllies while the Dothraki rack up many of the kills.
Why are we imagining if we would see a close up of 30 soldiers on fire? That is not what we saw. The director deliberately shows Dany not going for maximum body count, they deliberately show up close ups of burning soldiers to create cinematic effect on the inhumane aspect of the situation. I bring up Highgarden again - what if we saw the Lannister and Tarly forces storm the castle and slaughter 1000 Tyrell forces and civilians? But we didn't see that, the director cut the battle out for one reason or another. Why are we talking about what-if scenarios?
re:Blackwater - that was not an issue of double counts. you did not count deaths from the first explosion, and then counted the burning. this whole debate is about double counting.
How do I determine which were the duplicates? Well if I were to count one type and not the others, it would easily be the event that caused the soldiers to ignite in the first place - any event that shows dragon breath being cast upon them. That's like asking which event would you attribute a kill to, if you had to pick one: a person shooting an arrow into someone's heart, or a cut scene to a soldier on the ground with an arrow through their heart? -hkeseyan
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@nyan i never said give blanket points for large kills , i said that on screen she kills hundreds of people which cant be perfectly calculated so unless someone has a better method of calculation they dont have a right to crticize your method. -hindsight44
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@hkeseyan basically the imagined scenario is about how you could apply the scoring methodology to different, generic battle scenarios.
What it Blackwater had shown like 5 soldiers on the wide shot of the ship as it exploded? If the methodology is "just count the initial event, the explosion/fire blasts", it will fail in scenarios where the numbers of non-initial death types outnumber the initial one.
I think taking the max of any particular death type could be workable... but I do think this is convoluted for casual players to accept.
Also we do see a handful of random Drogon blasts in the background, during the Bronn scramble and again while Tyrion overlooks the scene. That and the fact that fields are flammable and fire spreads, I think gives plenty of... "plausible deniability" to the notion that the close-ups are not repeats. -nyan
jake.kmiech likes this -
Blackwater is not equivalent here, because we can (safely) assume that a wildfire explosion vaporizes those within the blast radius. If we see 5 people on a ship engulfed by wildfire, we see what happened to the High Sparrow, we counted everyone in that entire Sept as dead. With the dragon fire, we explicitly see people alive, on fire, and running around. Dragon fire is not shown to vaporize people or explode them into a million pieces - it is shown to light people on fire, in every occasion that it has ever been shown on this show, going back to the slavers' ships, Pryat Pree, the old master of the Unsullied. You can't definitively deny the claim that those soldiers did not die on contact. -hkeseyan
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Davos survived the blast radius of Wildfire and was not vaporized so we cant assume it . In the latest episode Dragon fire directly turned a bunch of dudes to ash immediatley and blew them away. -hindsight44
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Sure, you could make that argument specifically about wildfire, but I'm just trying to generecize the approach here. If we only had the first wide shot of 30 people this episode, and saw 100 burning bodies later, I think you run into the same problem. The numbers aren't there to wave away the burning bodies as assumed duplicates. -nyan
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Why is Daenerys getting points for another named characters kills? Drogon deserves these points, not his passenger.
-kyaathecatlord
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I think we still can't assume these wern't duplicates. No one is denying that the soldiers on fire die or that the scene was awesome. But it's also not fun so see someone run away with points so that almost no one is likely to catch up. -vjdev2015
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@kyaathecatlord Drogon or the dragons was not a draftable character, and Daenerys has a special where she inherits all of the points from what the dragons do. -nyan
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@vjdev2015 these dragon battle scenes are an auto-win for Daenerys it's true... but it's part and parcel for this type of game, there are big battle scenes, and huge moments for all characters. Arya killing all the Frey's was just as much of an auto-win in E1, and similar for Euron's battle performance in E2. Once a character scores >100 points it's pretty much an auto-win, so arguing that Daenerys getting too many points from possible duplicates is irrelevant to that point when we're talking about whether she will end up scoring 240 or 180.
And is there anyone really arguing that Daenerys doesn't deserve to win this episode single-handedly?
I'll also note that out of the 64 episodes of the series, Daenerys and her dragons have had ~2-3 "auto-win" performances like this in 7 years. It is a part of what makes her a common #1 pick, she gets you autowins once in a blue moon. On the other hand she had 12 points total in three episodes before this, as is common for boom and bust characters. A team that drafted her vs a team that drafted Cersei or Euron (who was picked R2 on average) would be 1-3 in H2H matchups right now.
There is a strong recency bias and perhaps a shock factor from seeing 240 pts, but Daenerys is not nearly as game-breaking as people are assuming. It's still just 1 win out of 7 (or 1 measly roto point out of ~56+ depending on league size), and there is no alternative counting methodology that could have been used to change that really. -nyan
1729stan likes this -
@nyan you're ignoring the effect that this has on direct scoring leagues. I know you've said that you recommend not doing direct scoring because of exactly cases like these, but some people still prefer it over the other two scoring methods.
we have heated debates over things like 5 points awarded either now or later in the season just because of ambiguity on whether or not someone like Olenna died, so why be so adamant on awarding Dany's questionable 60 or so points worth of kills, something that is very likely game-breaking and league-breaking for one of the scoring formats, and likely has zero effect on the other two formats?
this event for Dany puts anyone who drafted her at or near the top of their league's scoring if we do accept the fact that burning bodies might be duplicates - but it should put her in a potentially insurmountable lead in most leagues if we ignore the fact that these could very easily be duplicates. overall, given the gigantic difference this can make in the competitiveness of many leagues, I think the decision to count these kills should be taken very seriously, and brushing them off as making a minor or no difference in 2 of the scoring formats is exactly NOT the case that should be made.
in h2h it makes no difference, even if the opponent had every other character that scored points, they would not beat the player with Dany this week whether or not we count the kills
in roto - if somehow someone drafted the next 5 top scoring characters in the kill category, they would be about tied with Dany if we don't count the kills in question. to the current standings, this rare case would make at most 1/56th of a difference
in head-to-head, however, this makes a tremendous difference
we shouldn't make decisions on awarding points solely over the impact they have on leagues, but considering the fact that there is a reasonable argument against these kills (and what appears to be healthy support for that argument), we should take that into consideration and debate the legitimacy of these points a lot more than other events -hkeseyan
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Ok so you admit the administrator who does this for free pre warned all the players that a total direct scoring league may present this exact problem and then when people dont heed his warning its his fault and he should change rules thay everyone had access to pre draft?
Did Julio Jones get point reductions when he put up 300 yards because it was such an insane number? No because it was within the parameters of the game. Julio wasnt the first to put up 300 yards and Dany wasnt the first to kill hundreds of people at once. (Blackwater, Sept of Baelor) So there is evidence that a mass kill event could happen again so dont complain to @nyan that you didnt prepare properly.
-hindsight44
righteous likes this -
@hindsight44 who is talking about changing rules? we're talking about whether ambiguity should be counted or not. I'm not saying Dany's points should be capped because she's "overpowered" or anything like that. there is no definitive evidence either way of these kills being double counted or not, and with such a large point swing, why is the benefit of the doubt automatically being given to the assumption that the bodies we see are not bodies that have been shown already? I brought up the direct scoring because @nyan mentioned that it doesn't make a big difference in 2 of the scoring formats, which leads me to believe that the 3rd scoring format is not being taken seriously. whether direct scoring is recommended or not does not mean you can just ignore it. Julio Jones put up 300 yards with undeniable evidence, anyone that complains about that is just complaining that their opponent's player is too powerful. that's not what is happening here, so don't put words in my mouth -hkeseyan
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"this event for Dany puts anyone who drafted her at or near the top of their league's scoring if we do accept the fact that burning bodies might be duplicates - but it should put her in a potentially insurmountable lead in most leagues if we ignore the fact that these could very easily be duplicates. overall, given the gigantic difference this can make in the competitiveness of many leagues,I think the decision to count these kills should be taken very seriously"-@hkeysan
So i guess its alteast a little bit about Dany being too powerful. -hindsight44
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or it's about the difference that one decision can make, and it is a decision - it's not a black and white event with undeniable evidence either way. a ruling needs to be made in one direction or another, and so a ruling that holds that much weight should consider all of the ramifications. given that @nyan's last response made no mention of 1/3 of the scoring formats, I'd like to make sure that those ramifications were at least considered in the decision-making process. how much longer would you like to continue trying to convince me about what my motives and points are? -hkeseyan
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Hey sorry, it's been another backcountry week so I've been offline for a few.
Okay, now I'm getting the perspective of the comments saying that mega scores are game-breaking. And I realized a really bad assumption I had been making about the site, so I'm really glad you brought up the Direct scoring @hkeseyan!
Some backstory on scoring formats, we started out with just Direct Cumulative and Roto, and like any true fantasy league nerd I've been on the record since time immemorial that Roto is by far the best scoring format for competitive balance and diversified draft strategies (you can't just load up on the "best" characters, you need to consider the rarity of each stat type and what are the "holes" in your team composition), and that Direct Cumulative has deep balance flaws for any fantasy game.
Admittedly, like a complicated board game, Roto is a foreign concept that has to be explained anew to every player who comes in without having played in fantasy leagues before. So about two seasons ago we introduced Direct H2H scoring as a new default - it was easy to understand, more directly engaging, and solved the biggest balance issue by siloing the character performances into each episode, effectively capping any character score to only affect 1/10th of the season (now 1/7th).
So after we introduced that, and made it the default, in my mind everybody would be happy with Direct H2H or Roto and I kind of assumed that the old Direct Cumulative had died off as a scoring format, except for a few holdouts that manually switched into it in the settings.
Well, that was a really bad assumption on my part. Digging into the stats, it turns out that nearly 30% of private leagues are using Direct Cumulative scoring. That's wayy higher than I ever imagined, and explains why there's been such a schism between my arguments that there isn't an OP problem and the handful of comments complaining that this Daenerys score was single-handedly "ruining" leagues and making it unplayable.
My original suggestion, and still I think the best one for leagues willing to do it, is to switch your Direct Cumulative leagues into Roto leagues. Direct Cumulative is inherently broken for this kind of game. Mega events will and have happened, and they aren't exclusive to Daenerys - just look at S6 when Cersei, Hodor, Leaf, and Doran all had mega-events. Not only does it make your team irrelevant if you didn't make one of those picks, it also makes the entire rest of the draft irrelevant - the late-round sleeper pick in who scores 10pts points will never make a difference in Direct Cumulative when the winner's margin is 50-100pts, while they can always be the difference-maker in a close-scoring H2H matchup or tip the scales with crucial points in a Roto category.
If you look at any "real" fantasy sports leagues on ESPN, Yahoo!, et. al., there's not a single one of them that runs on a Direct Cumulative system by default. Even though mega events are far less common in real-life sports, they all still default to Roto, Roto H2H, or Direct H2H for competitive balance purposes.
That all said, the fact that 30% are on Direct Cumulative and only a tiny portion are likely to switch is problematic from a site admin perspective, because that's a bad experience. I'll likely make site changes next season to either have better pros/cons explanations for each scoring format on the League creation screen, or just remove the option for Direct Cumulative altogether. I need to understand better the reasons people are choosing Direct Cumulative over the other two options (or is it simply an education issue of players not realizing the balance issues until mid-season?)
For leagues unwilling to switch, I'll need to marinate on what kind of solution I can offer. I think you can debate on the duplicates or not, but it will have only a marginal effect and IMO, and now feels like an argument where we're looking for ways to reduce Daenerys' points for "balance" purposes, which feels a lot like rigging the scoring because we didn't like the way the episode turned out.
And it still won't ever eliminate the balance issue for mega-events. If Drogon is going to roast another army, or Cersei is going to light more wildfire, or Grey Worm graduates to 12th-grade literacy, there will just be certain events that come up that are indisputably high-scoring.
The solution might be, "Sorry, this scoring format is broken and it was the Game Admin's mistake to allow it to be selectable this season. You can always switch into these two other non-broken formats midseason though."
But I'll take more suggestions along these lines. IMO the debate over whether the 30-some kills can be counted as duplicates or not is ultimately going to be irrelevant to this larger scoring issue we're trying to solve. -nyan
jake.kmiech and righteous like this -
@hindsight44 I appreciate the comments, and basically I agree we shouldn't look at making decisions about general scoring criteria to nerf a specific event, rather we should try to figure out a solution to the issues of the scoring format, or the single character if really needed.
I don't think the critical comments about the scoring is anyone being ungrateful about the running of the site. But even for the conversations that drag on or become contentious, the criticism is always welcome - it's the most important avenue for feedback, and that's been a big help over the last couple of years to refine the game from being my own niche thing to something that's enjoyable for more players.
I will also say that I think all the conflicting ideas are coming from a good place, which is a lot of passionate people with their own ideas on how to run a fun fantasy game. Just like there isn't a single format of Catan, there are house rules and official expansion packs and completely new games that have been spun off. All the proposals will have some appeal to portions of the playerbase, and that's something I'm hoping to better enable when I can get a handle on expanding the site to allow for multiple games and admins.
For now however, the site only supports the one set of scores for everyone, so I hope people can understand that I'll have to make some judgment calls and reject proposals that will differ from how every player might do in their own ideal scorekeeping system. -nyan
jake.kmiech and chengire like this -
First off, let me start by saying that your work in running this site is not unappreciated @nyan, for @hindsight44 to even question my appreciation for it shows a lack of understanding in the case I have been trying to make for the better part of this last week. I understand the importance of feedback and input in running a league like this, but I also understand how it can pile on so much for one person - which is why I contain myself at times on smaller discussions. However, on a case like this, the impact is simply too great to just let it go. So while I know it complicates your work, I am defending it because I feel my case really is the best thing for the league as a whole. In the end, it's your choice and you know far better than any of us given that you created this site with a vision in mind, and have been around to see all scenarios and conversations since the site's inception, so of course your call stands above others. So, even if I can't change your mind, I'd like you to understand what someone else's opinion might be.
As far as scoring formats go, I understand how unacceptable direct season-long scoring is in most popular fantasy league formats. I, for one, have a lot of experience in football and basketball which are the two most popular fantasy leagues outside of baseball. In football, head to head reigns supreme, and categories are not even considered - I've seen more direct season-long in football than I have categories, in 11 years of playing fantasy football. In basketball, there's a large contingent for both direct and categories scoring, and even further there are contingents for both head-to-head and season-long scoring in both formats for a total of 4. I believe head-to-head categories is by far the most desirable format for basketball, and that is why I like fantasy basketball more than football (because football could never offer the same outcome from a categories format). Additionally, I think basketball works better in a head-to-head setting than season-long (and also it works better in a head-to-head setting than football does) because you have a whole week of multiple games from each player, and you have adjustments that can be made within a matchup and more reliability given larger sample sizes, etc etc. However, in the end that is just my opinion. There are, however, other fantasy games that have a whole slew of other scoring formats, all of which are respective to the game they are scoring for. For instance, there is fantasy soccer during tournaments like Euro or World Cup which tally up direct scoring for each round of the tournament, which cannot be compared to the standard American fantasy sports. There are fantasy golf leagues, hockey, movies, other tv shows - so many variations that you can't just assume some scoring formats are better in one "sport" because they are more popular in another. The most popular fantasy sport in the world doesn't even use the recommended scoring format in this league which is roto categories. So I think ruling direct season-long scoring is wrong because some people still prefer it and its downsides more than the downsides of the other 2 formats.
I actively chose direct season-long scoring for the leagues I'm in. I think head-to-head is really unfair and nerve-wracking in the case of Game of Thrones (frankly I think it's nerve-wracking in football as well, but you can't convince anyone to play anything other than head-to-head in football). Roto was intriguing but given the lack of experience of our league mates, the lack of research on fantasy GoT, my presumption that leaguemates were not going to place that much time into thinking about categories, and my belief that not all categories are created equal, I felt it was not the best idea. I was aware of the possible downfalls of direct scoring since I researched previous seasons before committing to it, and the only two events I had a problem with were Cersei dominating for the Sept, and Prince Doran's special. Cersei's was addressed by having characters do the dirty work themselves on kills, and I felt Prince Doran's was just a bad selection of a special.
Like you have mentioned before, you want to feel like when you're watching the show, the characters that have the most impact that week should receive appropriate points. I took a trip down the list of total point scorers in S7 so far, and I think it's pretty fair, with these notes:
1) Dany, while no one would argue she is the most powerful character on the show, you can't say she has been more than twice as impactful as characters like Arya, Euron, Cersei, and Jaime who have been kicking butt all season long and Dany has been getting her butt kicked up until one battle.
2) Ebrose's special puts him a little higher than one might expect, but he has had a lot of screentime so it's not too crazy
3) Bran, Sansa, and Jorah are some characters that have a lot of screen time and haven't scored proportionally at first glance, but in terms of actions they have taken to cause real impact on the storyline, it doesn't compare to people like Sam, Jon, Davos, Bronn, etc so it's understandable.
4) Similar to above, characters like Varys, Baelish, Brienne, and Gregor have had a lot of screen time but have not done much of impact with it, so while one may not have expected them to hover around 0-3 points, it still makes perfect sense within a scoring ruleset
5) The mid-level scoring characters otherwise all seem to make sense, they've been showing up and having great lines, been in the heat of battle, and had memorable death/sex moments which can be pointed to by someone looking back and recalling something that happened in previous episodes, like Olenna, Grey Worm, Missandei, Jon, Davos, Bronn, Sam
-note on Hodor: Hodor scored a ton of points last season through his special - so what? the impact he had took over an entire episode, one that made many (most?) fans of the series cry, and his special was not cheesy (I can't agree in the case of Doran's), it was as perfect a special as you can probably get, and the number of times he scored cannot be disputed, and the impact, while great, and matchup-winning, it was not as game-breaking to the point where it led the owner to automatically win the league like Cersei's did.
tl;dr: Overall I think direct scoring has been fair for the most part. The main issue has been the upper limit. One solution might have been to cap points per episode, but that's not even what I was asking for. Barring any outside measure of us capping points for "overpowered" characters, we are at the mercy of what the show writers show us on screen. However, we can interpret what is shown on screen in different ways. In the case of this event in question, it can be interpreted as the show writers showing bodies that were previously ignited a second time as they're burning, or as they are new bodies. Given this gray area, we have the opportunity to both stay within the rules while still remaining competitive, and I was just disappointed that the chosen option was to run up Dany's score when we could've easily avoided that while still justifying that in the rules base. -hkeseyan
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What specific language did i use to say you dont appreciate this work? I dont want a response i want a direct quote. Telling you to stop complaining because you were told no has nothing to do with appreciation. -hindsight44
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"the administrator who does this for free"
That is direct implication that this work that is done for free is not appreciated. I'm not the only one who got that impression, nor am I the first to point it out. You also failed to address any of my points directly and just continued to assume I was asking for a points cap of some sort, which seems consistent with the implication that you think that I'm asking for more from someone who is doing a favor by running this site as a service. This is also downplaying my case as just a result of greediness and not as one a result of logic. If you were targeting my logic you would've rebutted the points I made directly instead of my character. -hkeseyan
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Ok i used the phrase "he does this for free" to say hes not getting paid for this and making him respond to your multiple lengthy rants is excessive not unappreciative considering he does this for fun, not for money. Implication is not direct language, (thats a fact)im sorry you mistook the meaning of my words but without any evidence how much longer do you want to tell me what my motivations are?
Maybe examples will help. Children complain and throw temper tantrums all the time, that doesnt meant every child.is un appreciative of what their paretns do for them.
I can complain all day about American policy, that doesnt mean i am unnapreciative of my freedoms of what others have sacrificed for America.(Please dont make this political.)
Finally in response to debunking your logic why should i debunk your false equivalinces again when i already did in this chain and you blatantly ignored me?Davos was at the epicenter of the wildfire blast and survived it and Dany clearly turned people into ash immediatley in e4. I brought this up a few comments ago and you never responded it to it so why should i waste time telling you the truth when you ignore it?
Now as two appreciative members of Fantasora and @nyan i think we can agree this petty argument has gone on long enough. Feel free to respond and say what you want about me but this is going no where. -hindsight44
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I think for the most part we can drop the convo about whether or not or how much you guys appreciate the site. Just by logging in multiple times a week and thinking this deeply about the scoring, I think it shows all of you guys are appreciating the game/scoring efforts plenty =]
I'm continually impressed by your guys' ability to comprehensively dig up and go through all the previous scoring for characters. You bring up a decent argument that aside from the mega-events, we have a nice gradient even for season-long direct scoring (I agree with your assessments for what happened to Cersei/Doran in S6). As I mentioned, I don't think a one-off -30 nerf for this event is a long-term solution, we may have the exact same scenario in an upcoming episode.
Point caps specific for season-long direct-scoring leagues are a possible solution. Today it doesn't exist, but there's a possibility I can build a one-off version of it as a different ruleset in a few days. I would rather fork the S7 scoring to address, than alter the "standard" scoring record of events that's used for all the other leagues.
So if we go with that, what is this arbitrary limit we're selecting? 100pts/episode? 80pts/episode? Or will we do it per-event type?
I'm really intrigued about the "nerve-wracking" aspect you mentioned for H2H, it's the first I've heard of this feedback. I'll see if I can find you offline to talk about it, as I'm getting to E5 scoring and don't want to extend this comment chain too far off-topic and spam the recent comments page while that's going on. -nyan
hkeseyan likes this -
I drafted Dany because I knew shit was going to go down. Please don't nerf my MVP just because she's MVP. -righteous
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Reading over the complaint of the few using direct scoring... I'm not convinced that should be my problem. I need all the points possible if I'm going to win overall, even though I'm in direct H2H. -righteous
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Alright, here is the final resolution on this.
I see the problems caused by Daenerys' mega-event performance for the season-long Direct-Scoring leagues, and it seems unlikely that I'll convince most of these leagues to switch over into a new scoring format. To offer a pragmatic and generic solution specifically for these leagues, I've created a new Ruleset 5.0b, which is the same as Ruleset 5.0 except that it offers a per-episode point cap on character performance. Currently this cap has been hit only twice, with Daenerys getting a -143pt adjustment in E4 and Arya getting a -11 adjustment in E1.
You can preview these new scores on the Episode and League pages by appending the ?rulesetId=11 argument into the url. For example: http://fantasora.com/game/1/season/8/subunit/4?rulesetId=11
League Admins can switch the Ruleset at any time by visiting the Edit League page. I'd discuss this with the other players in your Leagues before unilaterally moving to it, but the choice is there for any League Admins.
In general, the counting methodology and Daenerys' points will remain as-is, which is that a classification of a body as "duplicate" will require some evidence that they are duplicates (unique insignia on the armor, or perhaps pinpointing exact locations). To that end, the arguments made in this thread weren't convincing enough, in light of the multiple Drogon strikes for which the impacts are not shown, and all the wagons being a fairly generic design (so "these two scenes both feature burning soldiers with wagons nearby" is not really credible when wagons were ubiquitous across the battlefield).
Hopefully this provides a clear counting methodology for the future, and provides an adequately balanced solution for the direct-scoring leagues this season. Roto and H2H leagues, as previously discussed, ought to handle the disputed ~30pts swing inherently with their scoring formats. -nyan
hindsight44, emilien.raggi, hkeseyan like this -
Thank you nyan, this is a great solution -emilien.raggi
hkeseyan likes this
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