Finding a balance

For some time now people have been concerned about the skills of rookies which are joining the Dev League and instantly becoming the top run scoreres, wicket takers or keepers in the matter of a mere seven or so games. Now, instead of just complaining, I figured we may as well come up with something better. I think what we need is a system that does the following...

1) Rewards players who have been around for a fair amount of time.
2) Limits the statistics that rookies can sign up to the Dev League for.
3) Still allows for rookies to have a decent chance of making a name for themselves.

The ideas I've come up with so far include the following:

1) Limitations - A system where you a rookie's stats are limited in a way that discourages players from going for stats that most all rounders in the world would struggle to achieve. I've already linked the captains to this image earlier - http://www.aiyon.com/keke/proposalforcwrookies.jpg (and yes, marc's already pointed out the error in that wicketkeepers also need to have a rating which is a multiple of 3, I'll fix that later). I personally think that a bowler should be able to sign up with a slightly lower average, but that's just my opinion.

2) Rewards - A system where "points" are given out at the end of each season depending on how many games you have played or how many days you were actively posting or just the mere fact that you've played for a season. A point could include taking your batting average or batting skill points up a notch, taking the bowling average / skill points down a notch or taking your fielding skill points up a notch. The problem would be finding a way that would make this worthwhile for older members, but at the same time still not making people like, for example, Cloete into batting Gods comparable to Bradman should he stay around for a few more seasons. We don't want to make people invincible, we just want to reward their efforts. Maybe we could make it so that the first season or two are worth so-many points and then after that the rewarded points slowly decrease by half each season? That sounds reasonable to me, and pretty logical too.

I signed up with a batting average of 38 and a bowling average of something like... 45? I think that's right. One other thing I think needs to be looked into is different averages for FC and OD. Averaging 40 in FC is, in my opinion, a possibility for a rookie. But shouldn't batting averages in OD be significantly less, in general? I think that might be a better solution for the limitations, now that I think about it... having a limit for FC of 40 (Bat) and 28 (Bowl) and then a seperate limit for OD, being something like say 36 (Bat) and 25 (Bowl), because in my opinion that's more realistic.

What do you think? Try to keep all thoughts on this unbias, though. We don't want a bunch of older people trying to be amazing or a bunch of younger people outshining the seasoned cricketers. What we need is to find a balance - because we all know that some cricketers can play years of cricket and never really get off their feet, some cricketers can be great from their first season and then go downhill, some can start off rotten and then meet their potential at a later date. In an ideal world, we could find the perfect solution somehow, but with the simming games we do have to accept that things will be a little unrealistic... just hopefully not too much. The question is, how do we find that balance we're looking for?

The thing about different averages for OD and FC is that a lot of players don't play both significantly enough to have statistics for both, but they are welcome to submit those statistics too.

Regarding the whole system, I like the principles of it. Perhaps a bit more refining required. Looking forward to hearing what others have to say.

Maybe have a "maximum" level of ability that a player can reach, instead of having slowly diminishing points. Although I suppose everything will be standardised now.

Question is, will people understand it when they sign up?

Samuel_Vimes said:

Maybe have a "maximum" level of ability that a player can reach, instead of having slowly diminishing points. Although I suppose everything will be standardised now.

Question is, will people understand it when they sign up?

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Still working on making it more user friendly... something like starting off with the worst stats possible and then adding points to each stat or something. Working on that now, actually.

It'll have to get MUCH more user-friendly because we want to encourage people to sign up, so it'll be ideal to have a quick form, instead of a big process. I'd recommend dumbing it down a bit and then we just add the link in to the signup form as sort of a disclaimer/fine print. That way they submit their stats and we adjust them according to the system.

Here's another idea, just to add it on to those above, for the limitations on rookies...

Players start with Fielding 3, Bowling 64, Batting 0.
A player can add 16 points to those three areas.
A point on batting ups the batting average by three runs.
A point on bowling lowers the bowling average by three runs.
A point on fielding ups the fielding by three points.
Only 14 points maximum can be given to any one of the three areas.
Anyone who puts over 8 points towards fielding is considered a keeper (as 8 points = Fielding rating of 27)

Examples of how this could turn out include those seen in the image attached.

This would mean that a rookie could...
Put their bowling average at 22 - but then they'd only have two points left for either 6 bat + 3 field, 3 bat + 6 field or 0 bat + 9 field.
Put their batting average at 42 - but then they'd only have two points left for either 58 bowl + 3 field, 61 bowl + 6 field or 64 bowl + 9 field.
Put their fielding rating at 45 - but then they'd only have two points left for either 6 bat + 64 bowl, 3 bat + 61 bowl or 0 bat + 58 bowl.
Of course they'd be stupid to put anything but 6 bat + 64 bowl if they're a wicket keeper, but you get the idea.

Any bowler in his right mind will go for the average below 34. He'd have to use at least 10 points on bowling that way. He would end up ith only 6 points left for his batting and fielding. I think this is the best way to go about things, actually. We could link them to that image for examples and then, to keep things simple, all we would need to say is this:

Tell us how you would like to split your 16 points between fielding, bowling and batting. You can put no more than 14 of the 16 points into any one area.

See the image for examples of how these averages will change depending on how you split the points.

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EDIT: Also, at the end of each season, we could give every player who was there at the start of the season a point to add to their end-of-season stats. Obviously they would need to be active on the forums to see the thread advising them of this point (they would need to post saying where they would like to put their point towards), so that would mean players have to be at least slightly active.

yer i agree but even look at my stats, in outdoor i open the bowling and bat at 4

bowling stats over the last 11 years

305 wkts at 15

3428 runs @ 42

yet in the game i am ok with the bat and ok with the ball

i think the above will work fine

Note that we could also look into using 17 points or even 18, 16 just happened to be the number I trialled it with after using 14 (14 gave awful results). I based it mostly on a 36 bat, 15 field for batter-fielder (not caring about the bowling) and 3 bat, 15 field and 31 bowl for an average bowler-fielder.

EDIT: Looking at the possibilities a bit further, I think we should give serious, careful consideration to using 17 or 18 instead of using 16. I can give a few more examples for the possible results if you like. The spreadsheet I'm using to play around with the numbers is attached...

Every 18-point possibility is attached. I think this is the most realistic one of the various versions I've had a play with. It might be an idea to not allow a player to start with the full 14 points in fielding, though, as it leaves absoloutely no room for improvement (I think...).

Let me know what you think of the different possibilities shown in the image and if you feel any of them are unrealistic. I think it's definitely the one to go with, though.

EDIT: Another idea is to make it so that 0 for bowling = 99 by default and then use the same results for the rest of them.

EDIT AGAIN: Thinking even more into things, I think maybe a 13-maximum in any of batting, bowling, fielding and a total of 18 points to use would be best. In fact, I think that would be perfect.

EDIT YET AGAIN: I've now changed the image, let me know if you think it would be better to have a 14 limit (which includes the dark blue areas) or a 13 limit (excludes dark blue areas). I think that with the dark blue areas excluded, we have the best possible starting stats. Best bowling is 25 (with crap batting and fielding), best batting is 39 (with crap bowling and fielding), best fielding (with crap batting and bowling, in other words a pure-bred wicket keeper).

well im against it, 1 because im a rookie myself..and a rookie can be better then player that are here long, i think marc is the only one who's complaining about it. i think if you do something like this you kick some of the realism out.

kwek said:

i think marc is the only one who's complaining about it.

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Wanna know what I think? I think you're wrong.

kwek said:

well im against it, 1 because im a rookie myself..and a rookie can be better then player that are here long, i think marc is the only one who's complaining about it. i think if you do something like this you kick some of the realism out.

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Not really. We're making everyone compete relatively fairly, regardless of standard of competition they play in - plus we avoid sign-ups like 99 bat, 10 bowl.

Reading through Daniel's system at first, I thought it was WAY too complicated, but now I can see some sense in it. I still think the bowling is too weak, though...you'd have to sacrifice absolutely everything to be a good-ish bowler. Batsmen can still be reasonably good if they choose not to be bowlers at all - which would be the way to go. All-rounders would be completely eradicated, I should imagine...

Hmm. To the latest edit, that seems to look okay. Just a shame we can't put the current stats into something like that...

kwek, you have to keep in mind that right now, we have some people signing up with batting average in th 30's and bowling in the 20's, with other saying bat average 15, bowl average 30… how is that fair? If we don't have a set system, it means that some people are getting away with things that others don't seem to be aware they can get away with. Last season people signed up with batting in 30's, bowling in 30's/40's, and I thought "Who cares? It's not that great..." (I was one of the people signing up). But now I'm seeing it from the other point of view, too... the stats that people are allowed to sign up with are getting more and more dazzling and making the people who have been here longer look stupid for signing up with what at the time were considered to be normal stats (but are now considered to be crap stats). Do you have any better ideas on how to fix this? And trust me, it's not just marc. I've had numerous people talk to me about it, including Neil, Age and Dan (Rai), some older members, some newer members. Don't think "I'm against it because I'm a rookie" because that's what we're trying to avoid. I've only been around for one season, so I'm not that much older than you, but I still see the point of view of the older members. You need to not think "What's best for me?" but instead "What's best for the Dev League in the matter of fairness?" Keep in mind that with the stats listed, you can still very easily make a name for yourself. In fact, your current OD stats aren't too far off what is listed, showing you'll still have just as much a chance as anyone.

What's unrealistic is a rookie signing up and leading both stats - Age and I spent a long time looking through past Aussie seasons and we can't find a time that it's been done. Hayden did well, mind you - 7th highest batting average in his first season, with a batting average over 50, I think. So to say the current way things are going is proven to be unrealistic in that manner.

Samuel_Vimes said:

Not really. We're making everyone compete relatively fairly, regardless of standard of competition they play in - plus we avoid sign-ups like 99 bat, 10 bowl.

Reading through Daniel's system at first, I thought it was WAY too complicated, but now I can see some sense in it. I still think the bowling is too weak, though...you'd have to sacrifice absolutely everything to be a good-ish bowler. Batsmen can still be reasonably good if they choose not to be bowlers at all - which would be the way to go. All-rounders would be completely eradicated, I should imagine...

Hmm. To the latest edit, that seems to look okay. Just a shame we can't put the current stats into something like that...

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Don't forget that we can still give out points for past seasons to make things more fair. We'd have to figure out a reasonable way to do that, though... something like 1 point for the first completed season, 2 points for two, then something like 3 points for 4 completed seasons, 4 points for 6... something like that anyway, you might have some better thoughts on it.

EDIT: Also, if the current system doesn't encourage all rounders enough, the general solution would be to bump up the points allowed to 19 or 20. It's actually quite simple to find a decent point. If we think it doesn't encourage specialists enough, then all we need to do is increase the extremes for any one field to 14/15/16. If we feel that it doesn't encourage all rounders enough, then all we need to do is increase the total points allowed to be placed. Once we find the numbers we're happy with, we'll be fine. The last edit I used has 14 as the limit (13 if you don't count the dark blue areas) and 18 as points given. If it's good enough for specialists but not for all rounders, I'll make it 14 as the limit with 19 total points given and we'll see how that goes.

To further encourage batsmen: Raise the minimum batting score (currently 0)
To further encoruage bowlers: Lower the minimum bowling average (currently 64)
To further encourage all rounders (but not specialists): Increase the total points given (currently 18)
To further encourage specialists (ie, keepers/bowlers/batsmen): Increase the maximum allowed points in any field (currently 14)

i tweaked your origional suggestion just a little, will post it later when i get the chance middle of teh day or tonight our time

kwek said:

i think marc is the only one who's complaining about it.

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No, I'm just the only one who has been posting about it - there's been many discussions I've had with many other senior players about it.

kwek said:

i think if you do something like this you kick some of the realism out.

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Yet it is realistic for 9 of the top 10 runs scorers to be rookies...

So what's your view on the proposed system, marc? The more people who give their thoughts, the better. Needs to be more/less favourable to bowlers, batsman, fielders, all rounders, anyone at all, just say the word.

Personally I'm not in favour of creating superb all rounders - and think maybe the idea of increases each season (to simulate training) is a valid one.

i myself am a rookie and the way i submitted my averages is by using my ones from IRL in my last two seasons of club cricket, that said i'm not exactly one of the ones dominating

marc71178 said:

Personally I'm not in favour of creating superb all rounders - and think maybe the idea of increases each season (to simulate training) is a valid one.

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To a maximum, though. After a while, it should peak out - a bit like a player peaks at about 29-30.