Dropping teams?
I've been thinking a lot about team play for next year and I'm not 100% sold on what's in my head.
Stemming from the draft thread, the basic idea being there would be 4 members per team, each player picks 2 cars at the beginning of each series. Car picking and bracket voting happen like normal and ONLY IF a car in the team's garage is raced would the team get points.
In short, action would be random...and out of 300+ cars I fear this would end up going down like the Rookie Picks did, not enough interaction and regular worry to make it interesting. You pick, you wait.
There's nothing stopping us from keeping teams more or less like there are, where it's just an accumulation of player points but that really doesn't emphasize team play...at that point it's just an identifier that says "I'm with this group" - it doesn't get you anything in the game and I don't know if that's enough.
I dunno...I'm starting to lean towards dropping teams from the game entirely until there's a way to add something of value to it. I'd love to see some sort of team play, but at the same time I'm thinking no one would be crying if that aspect of the game gone.
Thoughts?
Discussion
Hmmm...that's such a simple idea I think it might just work! Say four members per team, still accumulating points throughout the series. If your teams wins, you get something like +50 points for being on the winning team. Doesn't have to be complicated, does it?
That might be enough...I'm gonna chew on that a bit, see what others think...but I like it.
I am one that voted no because I think its too easy to manipulate the teams to get any bonus points that may be coming to team members. It seems pretty easy for the players that are consistently near the top to team up as one super team.
What if you have a team player that misses a week of picks--it happens. It seems like you would be out of the running at that point for anything unless other teams have the same thing happen to them. If someone misses a week, can you kick them out? If so, can you replace them? Can it be from another player on another team that wants to leave their sucky team?
If you go to the basis of the teams picking cars and get scores based on those cars, we may see the same cars being picked over and over to boost their team scores.
A thought just came to me. What about having the top <pick a #> finishers at the end of the season--become captains of teams. Then the captains have a draft to pick from all other players signed up. Any newbies during the season would have to wait until the following year--or you could have a supplemental draft in the middle of the season to get them drafted.
Each week, the captain gets to pick two team members to use their scores, but you could only pick a certain team member maybe twice. I think the teams would have to see which players have submitted picks for the upcoming races, so they don't pick someone who has a zero. Kind of complicated, but that would interest me.
Something similar to Chad's suggestion: Teams are generated by rankings from the previous season. If there were five teams, the number one player from the previous season would be on team one, number two would be on team two, number three would head up team three and so forth, going down the ranking to make the teams as fair as possible. Then each week the top two player's scores from each team would be added to that team's score. No worries about missed bracket picks that way, and no 'super teams'.
Good ideas...here's what sounds most do-able.
I think the systematic dispersal of team members isn't a bad idea but then I worry about even teams, since that'll be dependent on total number of players. It would eliminate the need for a draft (which is way more complicated than I want to build), but I guess I also saw teams as a way to get your friends involved...but maybe I'm expecting too much? I mean, when I think about other games where you grab your friends, create a team and then go play. But maybe the fantasy league just doesn't lend itself to that...?
But with this systematic approach, does everyone end up on some sort of team? Or do we declare a set number of teams (say 16, so 64 players) and go down the line of the top 64 to generate the teams...and then anyone on the board 65 or higher doesn't get a team? Making being on a team an earned thing, sorta.
I also like the idea of taking the two top scores from a team rather than the full team's scores. That does help eliminate any absentee problems.
Hmmm...lots more to chew on here but I think we're going down the right path.
So I think teams won't be part of the initial re-launch next year. I kept thinking about what to do with teams and how to do points, picks, etc and didn't have confidence in much. I also did some analysis of player activity and I'm not sure there are enough active players to warrant extending teams. Despite there being almost 75 people signed up to player, only 50-60% of them actively play week after week.
I just don't think teams would add much to game play. This something I'm keeping on the table as we move forward. If activity increases with the game then we'll revisit the possibilities.
Thanks for all the input thus far. If something strikes you in the middle of the night, please share...this is far from dead, it's just not for the immediate future.
How about this...
If there's an element of Rotisserie Baseball in the current Redline Derby model, what would you think about modeling the idea of "teams" on Fantasy Football...and the teams competition would take place along side the normal derby.
Let me just hash this idea out a bit:
16 teams of two players (to accommodate 32 regular players) or three players (to accommodate 48 regular players).
(You could also do this with 8 teams, especially as a trial run, if you don't think there'd be enough interest.) (*-see below)
A football-like head-to-head schedule is created that takes place during the regular derby season. Individual points are still counted, nothing changes with the regular derby...but, for each race...in addition to the individual points battle, one team faces another team. Combined points of the players on one team are compared against the combined points of the players on the other team...and wins and losses (and possibly ties) are created for the teams. Standings are kept up week to week.
Perhaps the teams are split into "conferences"/"divisions" (so you could win a conference championship...or, perhaps to borrow a baseball term, a "pennant")...or perhaps just the top two teams, by record, without any arbitrary "split"...will compete in a bonus race: The "Super Bowl" as it were. And in this race only, the two teams choose the cars...head-to-head, not seeded by Brian but strategically chosen...and the winner is crowned by the team whose cars earn the most points in that race.
(*)--How you determine teams can be done in various ways. You could let people form their own teams, you could randomly determine teams from the previous year's top 32-48 participants, you could have a draft and let the top 16 (or 8) players from the previous season pick who they want to team with...
--You might need to include rules about changing team members during a season--as some players may drop out or new players might sign on during a particular season.
--You could also create "playoffs" to determine who goes to the Super Bowl, but I'm trying to imagine a system where the "regular season" has some merit and where you don't have to create more than the "Super Bowl" in team-competition-specific races.
What I like about this idea is that it doubles down on the "fun" of picking cars without seriously changing the process by which the current races are run. It also enhances the social aspect of things, where it encourages us to be in contact with other participants. There's also a fun strategic conflict, where it's both good and bad if someone on your team makes good choices (good for your team, bad for your individual chances).
What do you think? (And if I didn't explain myself very well, feel free to ask questions to help me express my ideas in a way that makes sense to you.)
My idea wouldn't in any way impede your ability to win as an individual.
It would be another way to play, at the same time and not doing anything differently than you're doing now.
Double the fun for the same amount of work (well, for us, that is...)
This sounds like it could be fun. I would think to keep things fair and competitive, we'd have to limit the participants to those who submit brackets on a consistent basis. It would totally suck to be teamed up with someone who struggled to get their picks in on time. One catch might be the extra work that something like this could create. Perhaps someone might offer to coordinate with Brian to organize the operation and keep points/stats to ease the overall workload
Hmmm...I understand what you're saying @seattle...I think. Basically you creating a schedule of team showdowns on top of the regular season schedule. There aren't any additional points to worry about, the team gets the sum of player points (like it is now). You just have to wait for your team's turn in the schedule...interesting...thanks for the insight on this, it sounds like a concept that might work with minimal effort on the programming side.
The real trick in all of this is how to form teams. I don't really want to expand a series beyond the 16 (+1) tournaments, so we'd have to figure out the math to get 16 teams. I think an opt-in for teams would be a place to start, so we see how many people would be interested in being on a team, then maybe random teams for the first trial run.
And then, do the teams play in a bracket then too? So every team plays at least once but only the winners each week move on, then the "Super Bowl" lines up with the regular championship tournament bracket...? Ties would still be a lingering problem, but I don't think there's anyway around that, I would just need to account for it somehow.
Good ideas here, let me think on it. I like it, just gotta think how it fits in.
Oh and forgot to mention that teams would in no way affect any single person's ability to win a series, the season or earn bonus points and stuff. Teams would be secondary to all of that as to not effect people that aren't in teams. I see teams as an "advanced" feature of the game, some people maybe graduate to after playing and getting their head around game at large...or maybe it would be a good way to learn, dunno...nonetheless, if we go with teams, it would not punish those that choose not to be on a team.
I'd like to see a way to make teams affect scores. Perhaps the team with the highest average score at the end gets additional points. There should be a max number of players per team though.