World Beyblade Organization by Fighting Spirits Inc. Other Closed Threads

Report: Misrepresented tournament results in the Maryland Beyblade community

Oct. 10, 2016  11:16 PM
 
(Oct. 10, 2016  7:24 PM)Kei Wrote: Worth noting that if battles played in small events of six players or less were allowed to be ranked, all players participating would be at a severe disadvantage in the long term because of the size multiplier in the equation that is applied to the winners of every battle in our ranking system. The multiplier increases or decreases slightly depending on the number of participants in any given event; this is because doing well in a large tournament is understandably a more difficult task given their more chaotic nature and greater chance of going up against unknown players, which makes it harder to scout all of your opponents reliably, predict what they will use, and ultimately choose the right combo.

Our current minimum of seven participants already pushes the limits in terms of it being fair to participants of all BeyRanks low and high. For example, with my 1,688 BP in Metal Format currently, I would have to go undefeated to come out ahead most likely in a seven player event. The effects of this can typically only be seen among highly ranked players, but this is already arguably discouraging and unreasonable because perfection in Beyblade is unreasonable no matter how good of a player you are.

Very interesting indeed. But I question whether this would really be problem in practice. In your own case, your high rank comes from years of intense involvement with the sport. You regularly attend tournaments of 7+ members. You're a strong blader worldwide, as well as in your locality. You're also a pretty rare individual in the global sense. Someone like you, in practice, has no need for small tournaments because you clearly have access to more lucrative play options. Why attend a 4-person tournament when you can comfortably attend a 7+ tournament?

The BeyPoint scaling system as you describe encourages participation in larger tournaments for good reason. Similarly, it discourages smaller tournaments. This is a good thing! And I think this is entirely conducive of what a smaller tournament would offer the community at large. Celebrity-rockstar-bladers would indeed be worse-off at a small tournament - they also won't need to attend small tournaments in the first place because they clearly have better options. If it's not worth your while, just don't attend.

But I would guess (just guess, for now) that there are many more bladers who genuinely would benefit from attending a small tournament, inclusive of the severely limited rewards one naturally gains from that setting - raw beginners, people in remote areas, die-hards in dead communities, etc. These groups are very common. In many cases (and all cases in Australia), these groups do not even technically exist, so far as the WBO is concerned. But the fact is we're here, wanting to be a part of the official WBO system (ranked) and we don't much mind if our local metagame and rankings are far behind the rockstar-crowd of Toronto. Keeping track of (unofficial) local rankings in MFB was awesome.

Being part of the official system is crucially important. Take Time's recent (and not so relevant) account of paying for a random bystander's entry in his tournament. He paid that additional entry fee just so his tournament (which he had dutifully organised) could actually run officially - not just to randomly bloat the numbers. Once he had his minimum attendance, he did not pay anyone else's entry fee. All that mattered to him (in this case) was that his tournament was counted as official. His priority in this case was to secure the tournament itself. In this case specifically (and regardless of his other dealings), we see how it was worth a memeber actually parting with more money just to be counted in the WBO community. Regardless of the result, it is a big deal just to be able to participate in an official capacity. In small groups (small for whatever reason), this is even more important - the alternative is, technically, oblivion.

So yeah, I see what you're saying and I totally agree. The smaller the tournament, the harder it is to maintain and climb in rank. But I think it is totally appropriate to discourage smaller tournaments in exactly this way. If someone has access to a larger group of members, they should absolutely be attending larger tournaments, rather than trying (and failing) to farm the smaller group. Seems perfect, to me.

Meanwhile, smaller tournaments would give the proverbial dregs of the Beyblade world something to keep them included until times changes. I feel this must surely apply more broadly than just Australia.

(And yeah, I see Brad's argument for other forms of reward, which is cool. I do feel that being included in the official comunity would carry much greater weight for otherwise excluded members though.)
Oct. 11, 2016  12:19 AM
 
Yeah, I definitely hear you Beylon. The only problem to me is the idea that we exclude or discourage anybody from participating in any of our events, no matter how few or "rare" they might be. We want to be inclusive to everyone, and making the small events unranked would allow for this to be the case. But I definitely understand the value in having them be ranked as well.
Oct. 11, 2016  1:20 AM
 
(Oct. 11, 2016  12:19 AM)Kei Wrote: Yeah, I definitely hear you Beylon. The only problem to me is the idea that we exclude or discourage anybody from participating in any of our events, no matter how few or "rare" they might be. We want to be inclusive to everyone, and making the small events unranked would allow for this to be the case. But I definitely understand the value in having them be ranked as well.

The problem is that by barring small communities from the ranking system, they are effectively excluded from the main selling point of WBO tournaments in the first place. Why go through the trouble of making an event "official" if no Beypoints are awarded, little to no Credits are handed out, and at most one person receives a Face?
Oct. 11, 2016  1:25 AM
 
(Oct. 11, 2016  1:20 AM)Cake Wrote:
(Oct. 11, 2016  12:19 AM)Kei Wrote: Yeah, I definitely hear you Beylon. The only problem to me is the idea that we exclude or discourage anybody from participating in any of our events, no matter how few or "rare" they might be. We want to be inclusive to everyone, and making the small events unranked would allow for this to be the case. But I definitely understand the value in having them be ranked as well.

The problem is that by barring small communities from the ranking system, they are effectively excluded from the main selling point of WBO tournaments in the first place. Why go through the trouble of making an event "official" if no Beypoints are awarded, little to no Credits are handed out, and at most one person receives a Face?

I feel like it would be fair to find a compromise. Maybe beypoints can be awarded, but no credits awarded, and only the winner gets a Face.

I feel like credits as a reward provides too much of an incentive for people to exploit the system.
Oct. 11, 2016  1:42 AM
 
(Oct. 11, 2016  1:25 AM)Cye Kinomiya Wrote:
(Oct. 11, 2016  1:20 AM)Cake Wrote:
(Oct. 11, 2016  12:19 AM)Kei Wrote: Yeah, I definitely hear you Beylon. The only problem to me is the idea that we exclude or discourage anybody from participating in any of our events, no matter how few or "rare" they might be. We want to be inclusive to everyone, and making the small events unranked would allow for this to be the case. But I definitely understand the value in having them be ranked as well.

The problem is that by barring small communities from the ranking system, they are effectively excluded from the main selling point of WBO tournaments in the first place. Why go through the trouble of making an event "official" if no Beypoints are awarded, little to no Credits are handed out, and at most one person receives a Face?

I feel like it would be fair to find a compromise. Maybe beypoints can be awarded, but no credits awarded, and only the winner gets a Face.

I feel like credits as a reward provides too much of an incentive for people to exploit the system.

I agree with Cake and Cye Kinomiya. I think giving Beypoints but no credit for events like this would be better idea.
Oct. 11, 2016  1:56 AM
 
Agreed - extremely small events should not be eligible for Credits. I also don't think that such small competitions merit Gold Faces, either. I would be perfectly content with just access to the Beypoints system, despite the low tournament-size multiplier. There was a small group of Bladers in my area - six of us - who played on a weekly basis for almost three years before we went our separate ways due to college/real life taking over. In that time, we had zero official tournaments because the nearest other Bladers would have to drive 3+ hours just to get enough people together. A low points modifier compensates for the frequency of play, and simply having access to the ranking system would have made things much more interesting.
Oct. 11, 2016  2:42 AM
 
Yes, I actually thought a different Face would be created instead of the Gold Face.
Oct. 11, 2016  2:54 AM
 
We're currently working on a format for less than 8 players, but it will likely be unranked and have alternative rewards to what our other formats allow. Making these events unranked allows us to be way more lenient with them in terms of how they're run, but still allows us to give space on the site to promote them. They would also be free to enter. However, those events would still require a certified WBO organizer to be present.

While it may seem like nothing to just allow tournaments of any size into the ranking system, there's good reason for the way things are now.

The system was initially conceived for exactly the purpose you describe; to allow small groups of bladers to submit their matches online and rank them. You can guess how that went.

Our existing vetting process, combined with the eight player minimum, adds just enough friction to help ensure that hosts are serious about the role they are taking on and makes it more difficult for them to run fraudulent events. (Ironic, considering the thread we're in.)

Our processes require manual oversight in order to keep tournaments fair and results accurate. Suddenly, we would have to be able to deal with tournament approval and processing for many small groups of players around the world. (Note that Cake describes meeting weekly for three years.) In addition to the influx of activity we will see from Burst's international launch in general, it would be a huge task to take on. And it's not the kind of need we are built to fill.

Ultimately, our role has evolved into fulfilling what was long a pipe-dream: competitive, ranked Beyblade tournaments around the world. Our systems are built to allow for that. BeyRank measures a blader's skill in a specific kind of setting. Wins and losses are presented in that kind of context. And no matter how much we skewed scores upwards for larger tournaments, there is no way we would be able to compensate for the increased volume created by the ease of just getting a few friends together.
Oct. 12, 2016  9:18 AM
 
While I was thinking of possible solutions to future instances when a tournament host cannot get the required seven participants, the idea of ranking the matches, but not awarding credits or faces ran through my mind - but it got shot down pretty quickly by the same thought process that happened here, which ended with people just 1v1 farming to gain points.

I do agree with Cake about Rank/Points being the primary incentive for attending tournaments (besides, you know, actually meeting other people who enjoy the hobby), and while I definitely see the potential issues of leaving them ranked I think doing otherwise would actually discourage players from attending these small events, unless they happen to fall during some kind of promotion where participating in a tournament gets you an entry into a lotto or something (or if the size multiplier drops below x1.0 for six people). I think there's some room for compromise while keeping small events ranked, but I'm not sure what it is yet.

Not too sure that Kei's example about needing to go X-0 to gain points is totally valid, but that's probably only due to the region he lives in and the non-zero-sum system than for any other argument I can think of at this time.

To be fair, Credits are like my last incentive for going to a tournament but I guess other people are different. If I had to rank them in order of importance, it would have to be maybe Rank/Points > Faces > Actual Prizes > Credits? I don't know, maybe it's just because I don't play frequently enough for Credit farming to come into play that I don't see it as exploitable as others do.

My computer's about to die, so I'll have to end this post here. If I get a chance in the next few days I'll try to come back to it later and add some more depth. But for now, I have to say I agree with Cake, Cye, and FIREFIRE.
Oct. 12, 2016  1:04 PM
 
Some real interesting posts here. I'm super keen to see what the committee's plans are, so far as their commitment to a small format is concerned - almost seems wasted, discussing problems which may already be solved behind the scenes... An issue in itself, which has also been raised in this topic. I'm happy enough to keep discussing for now, not being privy to the information.

(Oct. 12, 2016  9:18 AM)Wombat Wrote: While I was thinking of possible solutions to future instances when a tournament host cannot get the required seven participants, the idea of ranking the matches, but not awarding credits or faces ran through my mind - but it got shot down pretty quickly by the same thought process that happened here, which ended with people just 1v1 farming to gain points.

Interesting that you considered it, as it appears a few people here have. It feels like an obvious enough solution, to me. But it's important to realise that nobody here has suggested 1v1 tournaments or any other system that would be conducive of farming or fraudulent activity:

(Oct. 11, 2016  2:54 AM)Bey Brad Wrote: The system was initially conceived for exactly the purpose you describe; to allow small groups of bladers to submit their matches online and rank them. You can guess how that went.

Sure, 1v1 is how the BeyPoint system originally operated and it didn't work. But this does not mean that 3-6 person, approved and paid tournaments won't work. The two concepts are completely different and here is why:

For one, scaling based on tournament-size will prevent farming from becoming an actual threat to the BeyPoint economy. Assuming the maths for the BeyPoint system is anything like I imagine, then it'd take forever for a single member, repeatedly playing against just two opponents, to climb up or fall down the rankings with any great significance; hundreds of battles, in fact, before they even approached the upper ranks. This would be practically impossible because they'd never be able to propose that many tournaments and have them approved.

They would, however, get the satisfaction of being ranked in the first place. Their inability to rise to the top rankings in the world seems fair to me, considering their group-size in a global ranking system. Bear in mind the popularity of regional rankings. They would also benefit from an added motivation to attend/host larger tournaments for bigger rewards.

As for fraud, the original BeyPoint system did not use entry fees. The modern system does use entry fees - and should continue to do so, in my opinion. If a cheating individual member pays his $15 to fraudulently host and participate in a fake tournament... Well... He's not climbing the ranks anytime soon and he's supplying the WBO with $15 of his hard earned cash. That's a $15 beyblade prize for someone else, in a larger tournament, paid for by a cheater. I would argue that fraud of this kind really only matters in the practical sense once it spreads to larger tournaments - which, in the case of this thread, it obviously has. Large tournaments apparently allow fraud too - just in a much more sinister and meaningful way. Similarly, this kind of sinister cheating might cease to exist if smaller tournaments were actually possible.

I am, however, acutely aware of the arguent that smaller tournaments might open the floodgates to a mountain of extra work for the committee. Here are some curiously relevant posts from elsewhere on the forum:

(Oct. 02, 2016  8:02 AM)Bey Brad Wrote:
(Oct. 02, 2016  5:52 AM)Yami Wrote: I think what we really need for this community is a sub group for processing tournaments. Since the committee is usually busy and requires free time to process tournaments especially if we're starting to experience tournament with seeding based on beypoints like the Experimental Format for Burst. I understand it requires committee powers to process it.

We'll never forget the hardwork that Uwik and Arupaeo went through processing the tournament at top notch.

This is a good idea. We managed to stay on top of this for a while but we slipped. However, it's pretty thankless, boring work, so I'm not sure how many people would volunteer. Ideally, tournament organizers could submit their results and have those results processed at the same time; we hope to make this, or something close to this, an eventual reality.

We currently have a huge upgrade to our ranking backend in development that will make it way faster to process tournaments, and we plan to keep building on top of this new foundation over the next few years.

(Oct. 02, 2016  8:02 AM)Kei Wrote: Yeah, we are definitely very aware of this issue. We are currently looking in to and working on ways to potentially allow people other than the Committee (ie. Organizers) to process events to some degree; right now it is impossible because Admin CP access is required to do so. And we're also looking in to changes to our system that will reduce the amount of time it takes currently to input results before processing them (right now each name of each BeyBattle has to be entered manually within the Admin CP).

However, everything is still a work in progress and is subject to change ... but thanks for your suggestion! I'd just ask that you please stay tuned.

So we might be seeing a natural solution to the "overworked" issue. To be honest, I feel the ramifications here are obvious: larger tournaments should always take priority (for processing) over smaller ones. I'd even go one step further and get regional representatives to compute the results of local tournaments (or an online robot). Obviously there are technical issues here which are apparently being resolved as we speak - but getting more volunteers on board seems like the obvious solution. Regional patriotism goes a long way. I'd personally love to compute a few local tournaments from time to time (because I basically never get to participate - due to my job, if nothing else) and I expect that if we had a more "open" processing system, this would free up the committee's time to deal with more pressing matters (and their own tournaments).

In any case, I do respect the crux of this particular issue and I'm excited to see what the committee's plans are. It just seems to me that excluding smaller groups (by default, meaning through no fault of anyone in particular) at the very least means a minimum gross loss of $15 for every Beyblade meeting played outside the system. And there are more small groups than big ones, in Australia, at least. That's a lot of lost money.

At best, there's a moral issue. I'm not hung up on it... But it's Wednesday. Don't judge me!

(Oct. 11, 2016  2:54 AM)Bey Brad Wrote: Suddenly, we would have to be able to deal with tournament approval and processing for many small groups of players around the world. (Note that Cake describes meeting weekly for three years.) In addition to the influx of activity we will see from Burst's international launch in general, it would be a huge task to take on. And it's not the kind of need we are built to fill.

Imagine if Cake had met weekly for three years with a 7+ cohort. That's even more battles to compute! And would you really hold that aginst him? I mean... That's a full tournament every week for three years! What a champion!

But I do jest.

(Oct. 11, 2016  2:54 AM)Bey Brad Wrote: Ultimately, our role has evolved into fulfilling what was long a pipe-dream: competitive, ranked Beyblade tournaments around the world. Our systems are built to allow for that. BeyRank measures a blader's skill in a specific kind of setting. Wins and losses are presented in that kind of context. And no matter how much we skewed scores upwards for larger tournaments, there is no way we would be able to compensate for the increased volume created by the ease of just getting a few friends together.

You can obviously do whatever you want - but I'm sceptical that allowing more people to participate in the game will make the system any less competetive. There's a whole lot of people out there (and in here, in fact) just waiting to compete.
Oct. 12, 2016  1:12 PM
 
I just wonder if everyone is like you and willing to pay an entry fee, everywhere around the world, for what barely looks like a tournament and has no prizes. Not everyone is that interested in BeyPoints, I would think.
Oct. 12, 2016  1:16 PM
 
(Oct. 12, 2016  1:12 PM)Kai-V Wrote: I just wonder if everyone is like you and willing to pay an entry fee, everywhere around the world, for what barely looks like a tournament and has no prizes. Not everyone is that interested in BeyPoints, I would think.

Yes, I do wonder. We've run polls on this in the past, right? I certainly wouldn't pay $15 to cheat for it. Hah.
Oct. 12, 2016  4:40 PM
 
Thanks for all the suggestions and ideas regarding this.

We're currently in the midst of rebuilding our ranking system into a modern API which will allow us to hook many more things into it, allow access to non-staff members, and improving the interface to cut out like 90% of the time currently taken up by data entry.

So it's totally possible we could reach a point where results submission is almost seamless and instant, requiring only a staff review and confirmation, and that would take care a lot of the issues I raised myself.

We will also very soon announce an unranked, unrecorded format for less than seven players. This will be our first time doing something like this at all, and we'll learn a lot from it that we could potentially apply to doing recorded tournaments for smaller groups in the future.
Dec. 15, 2016  8:41 PM
 
Stray Observation: The current expectations of hosts after the refresh make it extremely difficult for anyone who is not an adult themselves to host considering the responsibilities that would now fall to parents.

Other interesting tidbits learned from various sources:
Kai-V has seriously considering quitting the WBO and at various points has nearly done so due to a general feeling of disenfranchisement.

The committee talks about some members in fairly derogatory manners behind their backs more reminiscent of high school gossip than the behavioral expectations of a group of adults running an online forum.

Main point of post:
Brad phrased things with a shade of red on top of the true course of reality.
As anyone can clearly see from these messages, things are very different from the way he portrayed them, specifically in regards to my involvement.
https://drive.google.com/open?id=0ByIs86...DdxVlEta2M
Anyone who approaches things from an unbiased perspective is able to see that guilt was assumed before even the interrogation had begun.

Also, in regards to my references to this as a trial, no, it's not a court case, but the sixth amendment guarantees me certain things in "any situation in which a verdict will be reached with potential negative consequences for the defendant" not just in U.S. court cases. Those things include that I have the right to refuse, but the prosecutors do not have the right to deny me the following: a right to face my accuser, a right to know what I'm charged with, and a right to know the evidence being used as a basis for those charges, none of which were ever provided, despite my utmost cooperation evidenced by these messages. I couldn't really care about the punishments, they're all whatever to me as is the value I place on this in my life, evidenced by how long it took me to find the time to reply to this. All I carry about is that my reputation is not sullied on basis claims.

@committee prove me wrong about your dictatorial nature & inability to take criticism by not deleting or editing this.

Sorry if the images are out of order, I think people will still be able to make sense of them though.
Dec. 15, 2016  8:44 PM
 
One other unacknowledged (as far as I can tell) tidbit: Many people were eliminated in the Beypoint rankings. You know the people who benefit from that the most? Canadians, the country in which 90% of the moderators reside.
Dec. 15, 2016  9:12 PM
 
(Dec. 15, 2016  8:44 PM)TimeOut Wrote: One other unacknowledged (as far as I can tell) tidbit: Many people were eliminated in the Beypoint rankings. You know the people who benefit from that the most? Canadians, the country in which 90% of the moderators reside.

People who stopped playing over a year ago are considered retired. This is litterally mathematical, there is no way the system even recognises country of residence, and retiring old players is something we have been asked to do by a lot of people over many years. We may however extend the limit soon since we received some complaints by a few Members who were still active online but not in tournaments. 

People really need to stop trying to pin ill intent on us all the time hahah. We do our best to accomodate the majority and, if possible, all people, and most of what we do has been requested by a bunch of people (non Canadians too hah) in the past. 


About me wanting to leave, you were misinformed, seeing as my reasons were way more diverse than that and that the main issue is really not the Committee. 

For the rest, clearly what you bring forth is going to be highly selective, and surely Yami shared with you what proves we had against both of you.

Also correct me if I am wrong, but I think we litterally have a history of not deleting comments just because they are against the Committee or anything? Trolls yes, but that is another category of messages.
Dec. 15, 2016  9:27 PM
 
The United States constitution applies to actions taken by the US government, not to our privately-owned Beyblade website (and certainly not to those of us of Canadian origin, which as you've pointed out, is many of us). For example, the right to free speech means that the government cannot censor you. This is a common misunderstanding about the constitution though, so I hope this clears it up.

As your suspension has been lifted and Yami's will be lifted as of the 4th of January, and everyone has had the chance to have their say (and much more), I'll be closing this thread. People who want to check out your screenshots and come to their own conclusions are free to (although please don't include screenshots with profanity, as you have done).

As for your comments on the tournaments, the new rules are honestly not a huge change from before. The finals are slightly more complicated and we finally have policies on sending in fees and results —obviously nobody's going to get banned over missing a deadline, but the lack of any policy previously was too ambiguous. We'll be listening closely to how organizers feel about them. Obviously if the reaction is negative, we'll have to adjust. But we don't want to dismiss something without trying it first.

In addition, while the previous rules might have been simpler in some ways, their lack of structure and clarity often made them difficult to understand. We've rewritten the organizer's guide and all of our rulebooks to communicate much more clearly.

Regarding people "eliminated" from the BeyPoint rankings — we finally added a feature that people have asked us for for years, which is removing inactive players from the worldwide rankings. This doesn't affect your BeyRank score, but merely your worldwide ranking, which we want to be a more current snapshot of player activity, reflecting our evolving communities. The current cut-off is a year, which is totally adjustable. I'll write a bit more on the small changes that have been made to BeyRank and our vision going forward soon. Getting the site up took priority.

And obviously, feedback on these new rules and site elements is probably best left to topics other than this one.
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