@IcariiFA...Thank you for your willingness to revisit your position. Sorry if my post yesterday come off poorly. I wasn't trying to be a jerk, I was just trying to defend my position. Anyway, it looks like you'll be advancing into the next round, so good luck and good job in round 5!
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(22 Total) - October 2014; December 2014; January 2015; April 2015; June 2015; August 2015; September 2015; November 2015; December 2015(T); January 2016; March 2016(T); April 2016; June 2016; October 2016; December 2016(T); February 2017; April 2017; December 2017; November 2018(T); January 2019; April 2019; June 2019
(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
YOU MUST USE BOTH. Just messing around. Yes, since your Round 3 submission used two mechanics, you only need to use one of them. Of course, you can't mix and match (eg 3 cards with Cipher, 2 with Cascade isn't kosher).
@IcariiFA...Thank you for your willingness to revisit your position. Sorry if my post yesterday come off poorly. I wasn't trying to be a jerk, I was just trying to defend my position. Anyway, it looks like you'll be advancing into the next round, so good luck and good job in round 5!
I'm always open to critque, and I do make mistakes. I felt your point in this case was valid and reconsidered. I don't consider what you said being a jerk. I wish more people were open to critique. No worries
For what it's worth, the past two hosts that used "bottom X" did change the list up every round. When I was hosting and used "bottom X" I used a RNG to determine the list. From what I understand, each host is welcome to use whatever (fair) method he/she prefers.
In February I was host and in each round I randomized the list using the random function of Excel. I personally feel that the "bottom X" method doesn't create any problems if the list is randomized every round.
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Just wanted to answer a common question from the critiques of my entry for round 2. The question is "Why does this do more damage to blockers than attackers?" By having the card do more damage to blockers, it works toward encouraging attacking in the environment. It encourages the player holding it to attack (as they'll be more likely to kill any troublesome blocker), and it encourages opponents to be aggressive ("if he's holding Heliod's Zeal, this creature can only survive combat attacking.") Encouraging attacking is a good thing because it drives the game forward toward a conclusion. I think its healthier for the game than Smite type removal.
Whelp. It looks like I've already lost this months poll for the CCL. Admittedly I went into the challenge feeling like I would lose based on the fact the we were required to use different mechanics, of which I feel cipher is much more popular. I feel in the future, final round challenges where the requirements are different among players should be avoided.
Whelp. It looks like I've already lost this months poll for the CCL. Admittedly I went into the challenge feeling like I would lose based on the fact the we were required to use different mechanics, of which I feel cipher is much more popular. I feel in the future, final round challenges where the requirements are different among players should be avoided.
Anything can happen, in the meantime I challenge you to the second round of Finals - make me a Cipher cycle. I did a Bushido one already here
Sure, I accept your challenge. Woulda said something sooner but I've been out of commission with strep.
• The Card Creation League is a monthly contest in which players compete over six rounds. Each month has an overall theme and/or story, determined by that month's host.
No change here.
• Each round, the host will assign a card creation task to the players. This task may vary between teams or players.
I know this has been done in the past, but I'm not sure giving different tasks to different players or teams is that fair. What if one has a more difficult challenge than another? It's quite hard to make a number of challenges of the same difficulty as host.
• The first three rounds are open to everyone who joined in during the 1st Round. After these rounds, the Top 2 players from each group will move on to quarterfinals.
So it becomes like the MCC in that you have to enter in round 1, rather than anytime until round 3. I think this is more formal than substantial of a change, as if you entered in round 3 it was already almost impossible for you to accumulate enough points to pass, so this is a change I can accept without any significant problems.
The second sentence here means that the quarterfinals may have more than eight players, any number actually. For example, this month there are five groups, so if this will be applied we will have ten players in the quarterfinals. I don't have any problem with this personally, I just think this needs to be crystal clear, as until now the quarterfinals have always been a top 8.
• The groups are created randomly by the host, with a size of one group at most five contestants, and the number of groups at least four. Each round, each group critiques one other group it has not yet critiqued.
This requires at least 16 players to be properly done. What if there are less of them? If I recall correctly, it happened sometimes. We make groups with three players, giving only two points to the first, one to the second and zero to the third? Are we sure that is fair for players in larger groups?
• Those who advance to the quarterfinals are again divided into two randomized groups.
• In the quarterfinals, the remaining players critique all entries in the other group, in the end Top 2 from each team advance.
At the contrary of before, this time in the semifinals we will still have a top 4 no matter what. The problem I see here is one the MCC has, but the CCL had not until now. For example, let's say the standings in the two groups are as follows (groups are A and B and players 1 to 4, scores are completely made up to show the point):
Player A1: 20
Player A2: 18
Player A3: 13
Player A4: 9
Player B1: 27
Player B2: 12
Player B3: 11
Player B4: 10
The top four are (in order) B1, A1, A2, A3, and with the top 4 system they would advance. With this new system, A1, A2, B1, and B2 advance instead. In particular, between A3 and B2, A3 has more points (the total points in each group are always 60, so it doesn't make a difference) but he/she is eliminated, while B2 has less points but advances. This happens all the time in the MCC with brackets and it's the only thing I don't like in the MCC, but it never happened in the CCL with the top X system. Are we sure we want to introduce this to the CCL?
• The host will break any ties up to this point.
How? It should be specified. There should be some objective criteria, otherwise this will just turn to the host's personal and subjective preference. This is a critical point in my opinion.
• In the semifinals, the winners of the quarterfinal groups are matched with the runner-ups in their team for a double 1vs1. This round, the host is the one and only judge. Both winners advance.
See the previous point. On which bases does the host pick who advances?
• The finals are decided by a public poll.
No change here.
• Rounds last exactly five days for submissions followed by up to five days for critiques, the next Round starts simultaneously with the previous one's critique stage.
This is a very welcome change on my part, as it directly deals with the main problem I had in February in my only experience so far as CCL host. It was just too frantic. I had a schedule, but after just a couple rounds where people were late it went completely out the window. Almost every day I had to pm people who weren't posting cards or critiques. The rhythm was just too fast if I wanted to fit it all in the month, which I really wanted and tried to do but only to discover that it's practically impossible. That's why I was planning to not host the CCL again at least in the short run. These changes should better this problem, so they could make me re-evaluate that if they're applied.
• For the first three rounds, players are divided into teams. Four teams is standard, but there may be more depending on the number of players. Each team will review another team's cards during the critique period of that round.
See above the point about the standings. The division in teams is exactly what generates the potential problem I'm talking above.
• Even though those who advance are not known by the beginning of the Quarterfinals and forth, all previous contestants are to submit new entries with the clause they may turn out irrelevant.
This is a necessary evil that comes from overlapping the critiques of one round with the design phase of the following one, which I love as a change, so I'm more than open to accepting this too.
• Each player must submit a full Ranking for the team he or she critiques at the end of each round. Last place is worth 0 points, each one higher is worth 1 point more. In a group of 4 players, the scores would be 3 points for 1st place, 2 for 2nd, 1 for 3rd and 0 for 4th. These critiques are submitted in the same thread as the submissions for that round.
In groups of four people, asking for a top 3 or a full ranking is practically the same thing. It changes only for groups of five people (I'd say "or more", but we said groups of more than five people aren't allowed). This is what requires the "normalization" procedure, but I did that myself so no problem here.
• Additionally, each player can receive 4 bonus points per round. Two points are awarded for posting a full Ranking, and up to two points for providing critiques for that team's cards. Short comments are worth one, more in-depth notes are worth two.
The last sentence is a wonderful idea and badly needed. I do my best to give thorough and thought out critiques, and I see people getting away with one word judgments who don't effectively give any feedback at all. I'm not making a case out of this and neither I would want to, but it's something that had to be dealt with somehow. In February, I had to give the same bonus point to both kind of players, because technically those were the rules, but it didn't feel right.
• Suggested areas to critique include creativity, balance, printability, and relation to the overall theme or that player's previous cards.
Until these are only suggestions, it's fine. I wouldn't want to impose everyone a specific rubric, the MCC is the place for that level of strictness.
Grading System:
Prior to Semifinals, players have a chance of getting a total of 100 points toward their score each Scoring Round. Scores for each Round are determined by the following equation:
Total points of Player A in round N = 100 * X/Y, where:
X = Total number of Scoring Points (Judge Points + Additional Points from Ranking & Critiques)
Y = Total number of Possible Points ( (Number of Contestants in Group - 1) * Number of Judges + Additional Points)
This is practically the same thing I did in February, so I definitely agree with this. Beside that, some form of normalization is needed to account for groups with different numbers of players.
The Schedule is as follows: 1st-5th: Round 1. A prerequisite for participation in the new month's CCL is voting in the last month's final public poll. 6th-10th: Round 2 and critiques for Round 1. 11th-15th: Round 3 and critiques for Round 2. 16th-20th: Quarterfinals and critiques for Round 3. 21st-25th: Semifinals and critiques for Quarterfinals. 26th-30th: Finals and critiques for Semifinals. Next month's 1st-5th: Final public poll.
If a month has more than 30 days, the host may prolong any round by one day.
If it's February, the host should shorten one or two rounds by a day, preferably the second and third ones.
Hopefully we're able to stick to that schedule and actually be done on the 5th of the following month, instead of the 10th-15th as is unfortunately usual for the CCL. For example, today is May 16th and we still don't have the official winner for April (even if we might guess who it's going to be from how the vote is going)! This is another ongoing problem in my opinion, and if we're able to solve that, good!
Overall, these are good changes that could solve some ongoing problems in the CCL, but we need to pay attention not to introduce more potential problems, such as the one about the standings I talked above.
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
As the April Finals poll has now ended, I'd like to congratulate Ryder052 on winning CCL April! Thanks to everyone who participated last month, hope you all had fun.
I'll follow up on June if possible,to set a good example with the new system
I have some qualms with the new rules you are proposing. I would of played this past month, but with how the rounds were already pre divided into groups and after missing the first one, It kinda felt unwelcome. I really have always enjoyed how the first 3 rounds of the CCL were less formal and did not require me to participate in each (despite the advantage in doing so.) CCL has kind of been a bridge as a more casual design competition then the MCC and I'm worried the making it more formal will negate that distinction.
The idea the we have to submit cards in advance without knowing if we move on to the next round is a huge con to your proposed system and has the potential to leave many players bitter and waste there efforts. Additionally, there is a lot of subjectivity left to the organizer in terms of tie breakers and whether or not a players critiques are worth one or two points based on brevity. The final major note I have at the moment is that the proposed ranking system, where you judge not a top 3 but every one in order and assign points scaling upward. As I understand it if one group has 4 players and the other has 5, the one with 5 players have more points to earn. That doesn't seem reasonable. I realize the opposite case where top 3s taken from different group sizes aren't 100% balanced either, but it does put players up for the same number of possible points in a group verses everyone having a relative score. All that ranking system does is favor being in larger groups than smaller ones instead of vice versa, and the advantage seems larger than it was before.
Honestly I never really felt that distinction between CCL and MCC. If you miss the CCL's first round your chances, of qualifying to the top X are close to 0, and if you just like designing cards fit for a particular challenge, there is nothing stopping you from posting these anyway
Does that mean you'd still include it in a group to be judged? If not, that's a fruitless suggestion.
I agree, submitting cards in advance may not be an ideal solution, but it is a trade-off, my goal was to keep all the "work" within the month itself. Having it that way also helps the final contestants of the last month get the votes, I may even add 1 point bonus for writing comments about those for the 1st Round.
I think more players will be annoyed at making entries that are disqualified then taking a few more days into the next month. This is really my biggest concern.
Tie breakers have always been that way, you can check in the first post in this topic
If you're formalizing everything else, that's inconsistent.
I will specify what is a "short comment" exactly - up to one sentence.
Potentially arbitrary. Consider:
"I don't like the card. It's pretty weak and dull. Also, the name is annoying."
Vs.
"I think this card would only be played as a fringe card in limited and wouldn't excite players between having a generic flavor and no abilities that appeal to any of the major psychographics."
According to you, the first would get more points.
Last, but not least, the scores you are so worried about. Math says we're cool. Remember the points earned are in the end divided by max points possible to earn. It is a percent-based score. You can never get more than 100
I can do math and understand the division, thank you. I think I spoke poorly in describing my point. By making it so everyone except the person in last gets some amount of points, your weighing an advantage towards larger groups since your more likely to get something rather than nothing. Its not that there is an imbalance in the calculating the scores, its that 4th place in one group will net you points while in another you'll get nothing. Overall, a larger groups is "safer" for earning some amount a points. I suppose the reverse was true before, but which method is more fair? The more I think about it the more I'm unsure.
Really though in breaking everything down, after smoothing over some inconsistencies in how formal you're making this I think it'd be fine to test. Except the whole submit your cards in advance in case you pass thing. That is perhaps the one element I'm vehemently against.
I think more players will be annoyed at making entries that are disqualified then taking a few more days into the next month. This is really my biggest concern.
(...)
Except the whole submit your cards in advance in case you pass thing. That is perhaps the one element I'm vehemently against.
I wrote a detailed response to this but it got lost due to misclicking. I don't want to retype everything again, so I'll just summarize what I wrote.
If it really just took "a few days into the next month" it'd be fine, but the reality is that it's habitual for the CCL to take at least until the half of the following month, and that's a very big problem from my own point of view. I tried setting a schedule to fit everything in a few days more than one month when I was host in February but failed because I needed each round to last no more than 3 days for design and 3 days for critiques, but there were people who didn't post in 5 days. I had to pm such people everyday often with no result and a lot of frustation on my part. I'm not pretending all people being as active as myself on the forum, of course, but we have to acknowledge that with the classic system it's impossible to fit everything in one month, so we have only two options:
1- Keep the classic system, but set the standard duration of the CCL to six weeks (a month and a half) instead of a month, with each round lasting exactly one week (say four days for design and three for critiques, for example), but acknowledge that by mentioning both months in the name, for example "April/May CCL" instead of just "April CCL". It's no longer just the "April CCL" if it takes until a few days ago (May 16th or 17th if I recall correctly) to have a winner.
2- Try something new like Ryder did this month, with its advantages and disadvantages.
This is the basic choice we have to make as the CCCG community, and of course we need to make it together.
Honestly I never really felt that distinction between CCL and MCC.
About this I just wanted to point out that instead I have always felt that distinction, even when I was just a lurker. I also think that it's good to have the different contests have scaling grades of strictness and formality: the DCC has the lowest, the MCC has the most, and the CCL is in the middle. That's confirmed by my own experience in all three, and that's good, because there are people who don't enjoy too much strictness and formality and there are other people who feel a real need for them instead. I know this for certain from pm discussions I've been having with people from both camps. This way each player can choose the contest(s) that best suits his or her own preferences.
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Overall, a larger groups is "safer" for earning some amount a points.
I wanted to explain why this is not the case mathematically, but it's really simple. You don't compete with players from other groups for quarterfinal advancement, so this is irrelevant.
How is it irrelevant for the first 3 rounds? If I'm in a group of 4 for one round and someone else is in a group of 5, and we both place 4th every time with every judge , in the smaller group I would be award 0 points by every judge and in the larger group they would be awarded 1 per judge. Right? It doesn't matter that It's being divided based on how many people are in a group because a number great than 0 divided by a number is always great than 0 divided by a number. Unless I am completely misunderstanding the gist of your scoring.
That means that they come out better then I would for determining averages later, correct? This is different than the old system as points where only given to the top 3 regardless. One system favors smaller groups and the other larger. It's not to say that one is "wrong" but they favor different things. Is that not true?
That means that they come out better then I would for determining averages later, correct?
Even if they have better averages, as I said, you don't compete with them. Top 2 from each group advance, if your whole group is "handicapped", the chances are even.
Ah I see what your saying now!
To me, that makes this not the CCL anymore. The whole cumulative score systems with finalist going to eliminations rounds is gone. Of the three elements I think of when it comes to the the CCL (peer judging, casual submission environment, point advancement qualifying to elimination rounds) you propose to eliminate 2 of them.
I can understand wanting to change the timing to make things fit more evenly into a month, but the rest of this changes just seem like you want a different competition than the CCL.
Oh come on, the global scores thing is a relatively new addition to the CCL. At the end of June I suggest we make a poll and let everyone choose the system.
From the past year or two's perspective, I'm on point. I've only actively participated in the CCL for the past year, but those elements are what made it different for me. Looking back a bit further, it's been several years that there was some point accumulation. "Relative" is really subjective here.
If you want to start a poll, that's fine. Just don't wait until July (I'll be abroad on off the forums most of the month.) I don't want to miss my chance to vote and do an "absentee ballet" somehow haha.
Sure, we want to do do July as the majority decides
Considering there have only been two people to comment on your proposed rules, anything that invovles more people would be an upgrade than just running off based on one posters whims.
Please bare in mind that I have only participated in the CCL once (although I plan to participate again in the future), so my thoughts may not hold much weight but, if I could recommend one change, it would be a harsher penalty for not submitting a top 3 on time. In my mind this should result in a DQ. Using a point system for crits seems fine to me, but you shouldn't sign up for the CCL if you can't get a top 3 in, and be on time with it. From what I've heard from some CCL organizers, chasing people down for crits and a top 3 is a major hassle, one that I don't think a person that is volunteering to host a competition that benefits the whole community should be saddled with. Just my $0.02.
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(22 Total) - October 2014; December 2014; January 2015; April 2015; June 2015; August 2015; September 2015; November 2015; December 2015(T); January 2016; March 2016(T); April 2016; June 2016; October 2016; December 2016(T); February 2017; April 2017; December 2017; November 2018(T); January 2019; April 2019; June 2019
(8 Total) - May 2015; May 2016; June 2016; August 2016; October 2016; December 2016; October 2017; May 2019
(7 Total) - September 2015; October 2015; January 2016; March 2016; April 2016; July 2016(T); March 2019(T)
Hey guys, glad to see that the CCL is still going, sorry that I'm pretty out of touch on things. Definitely appreciate you writing up a new proposal, Ryder, nothing at all wrong with trying to make changes to improve the system. Hopefully we can get a consensus among the recent hosts and participants.
To me, the fundamentals of the CCL are peer review and a series of flavorful challenges. I do also feel that there is a casual aspect to it as opposed to the MCC since you will get a variety of peer opinions. The biggest obstacles that the CCL faces are the work required to host it and the difficulties maintaining participation through the team rounds, getting critiques in particular. With that in mind, I'll address the specific points in discussion below.
Point System
Is there a big advantage to ranking everyone and giving points down to second to last as opposed to the Top 3? I agree that there doesn't seem to be a mathematical difference, but it can be hard to rank people when doing critiques, so Top 3 makes it a bit easier since you don't have to rank down to 4th, 5th, etc. It's also easier for the host since there are fewer numbers to keep track of, which is a big plus.
I am not sure what the current status quo is, but I am opposed to having scores counted across all players as opposed to within teams. Even with the percentage normalization, circumstances are often different for different teams (sometimes a team may only get one or two critiques, for example). I also think it's fun for each team to have different challenges in some rounds, so it is most fair for each team to only compete within their team to advance. The drawback is that you could have a strong team that sees strong designers eliminated and a team where a weaker player squeaks by, but the team selection should be random and I think both of those situations can be fun and keep a variety of players involved.
Length of the Contest
The CCL is definitely known to run well over a month. Simultaneous critiques and submissions have been tried before, I think, and would probably be fine during the 2nd and 3rd round, but I think it is somewhat confusing to have everyone submit quarterfinal cards and then go back and say "only these 8 players actually made it". If I understand Ryder's proposal correctly, this happens again with the semifinals, where all 8 quarterfinalists submit but then get paired up when you figure out who passed the quarterfinals. In the past, I have enjoyed challenges that are personalized to your opponent, like "make a version of your opponent's legendary creature in another color" or whatever, and this would make that difficult.
I would like to float a different proposal to give the CCL more breathing room; cut one or more of the elimination rounds. I think the eliminated players often lose interest after quarter and semifinals and fail to vote in the finals. I always liked the quarterfinal round when we had each of the 8 players critique and pick a Top 3 from the other 7, because those players were usually pretty invested and provided interesting feedback. Here are a couple of ways we could restructure the elimination rounds:
Everyone critiques the Round 3 submissions and you get the top 2 from each team to advance. I think 8 (or more if there are more teams) is too many options for an effective poll, so these people should critique each other. You could end based on those rankings or cut half the players for one more round.
You could cut to just the top player from each team (both can advance for ties). Have them do a final challenge and go directly to a public poll. Specifically, I would recommend a multiple choice poll and assume that each of the players votes for themselves (plus any other competitors they want to vote for).
I'd like to avoid any rounds where only the host judges, since the CCL is all about multiple peer opinions. Perhaps ironically, the final polls are often where you get the least feedback, since people just vote and don't post any comments. I think 4 options might actually make for a better poll since it would be a bit broader competition.
So with those suggestions you could cut down to 5 or even 4 rounds total, allowing as much as a week. You could try a schedule like below.
1st to 7th: Round 1, long to allow for plenty of people to see it and get in.
8th to 12th: Teams assigned for critiquing of Round 1 and Round 2 submissions
13th to 17th: Critique Round 2, Round 3 submissions
18th to 20th: Critique Round 3
21st to 24th: Top 2 from each team submit for semifinals (normally 8 players)
25th to 27th: Peer critique of everyone else in the semifinals, cut to finals (normally 4)
28th to end of month: Final submissions
1st to 7th of following month: Final poll open during this time and advertised in Round 1 of the next CCL
To me, the fundamentals of the CCL are peer review and a series of flavorful challenges. I do also feel that there is a casual aspect to it as opposed to the MCC since you will get a variety of peer opinions. The biggest obstacles that the CCL faces are the work required to host it and the difficulties maintaining participation through the team rounds, getting critiques in particular.
I agree both about the peculiarity of the CCL being its peer review system, and about the casual aspect. In my experience as CCL host, the greatest and worst part of the work wasn't the calculations involved, those require just a few minutes if you set up an Excel spreadsheet, but having to continously try to contact people who didn't post cards or critiques almost every day, often with no results. Whatever system we implement, we have to make sure participants are active enough. We should allow each round the right amount of time, enough to be seen by all people involved but not so much that the contest extends too long into the next month.
Point System
Is there a big advantage to ranking everyone and giving points down to second to last as opposed to the Top 3? I agree that there doesn't seem to be a mathematical difference, but it can be hard to rank people when doing critiques, so Top 3 makes it a bit easier since you don't have to rank down to 4th, 5th, etc. It's also easier for the host since there are fewer numbers to keep track of, which is a big plus.
I also think a top 3 is enough. Also, it helps with the possibility that critiquing groups (if you make them) might include a different number of players.
I am not sure what the current status quo is, but I am opposed to having scores counted across all players as opposed to within teams. Even with the percentage normalization, circumstances are often different for different teams (sometimes a team may only get one or two critiques, for example).
Are we sure teams are needed at all? Was something wrong with the critique list system? To me, the looping list still feels the best critique system: each player critiques the same amount of cards so there aren't problems like groups having a different number of players, and if each player submits critiques (like they should, maybe we can think of some harsher penalty for not submitting critiques, like someone already proposed?) there's no need for normalization. Also, there are no problems like one group being made of stronger people, because no player critiques the same group of players. To me, it looks like having groups instead of the looping list might introduce more problems than it solves. Of course, I'm thinking of a looping list that's always randomized in each round.
I also think it's fun for each team to have different challenges in some rounds, so it is most fair for each team to only compete within their team to advance.
Here I strongly disagree. To me, having different challenges for different players in the same round is wrong, and I've never liked rounds where that happened as lurker. It never happened to me as a player, but if it happened I can only imagine I would like it even less. It may be a rare exception to shake things up sometimes, but shouldn't be any more than that in my opinion. I just don't see it as fair. It's very hard to make different challenges of the same difficulty as host. If I'm in the group of players who got the more difficult challenge I might wonder why did others get an easier challenge.
The drawback is that you could have a strong team that sees strong designers eliminated and a team where a weaker player squeaks by, but the team selection should be random and I think both of those situations can be fun and keep a variety of players involved.
See above. With the looping list system, this drawback is not there. Also from here I get that we have a different concept of "fun", but it makes sense because fun is highly subjective. To me those example situations are not fun at all, but I'd rather call them unfair. Yes, I'm a Spike and I don't like variance... but don't ever let my own opinion prevail on that of the majority. This is just my own opinion, and I'll never say that enough.
Length of the Contest
The CCL is definitely known to run well over a month.
And this is a problem. Maybe the biggest one from my point of view. The fact that it's always been like this is not a justification to me. I've understood why it's like this with my hosting experience: it's just impossible to have six rounds of design and critiques in one month. The average month is 30 days long, so if you have 6 rounds each of them needs to last no more than 5 days, and in those 5 days both design and critiques must be included. I tried in February to have a schedule with 3 days of design and 3 of critiques (so 6 total days instead of 5) and still failed because people weren't keeping the pace! That's why I said (and still say) that we need to either acknowledge that, embracing that fact until the end and thus calling it for example "April/May CCL" or do something about it. Overlapping design and critiques, and your suggestion that we could remove one round are both things that go in the right direction to solve this problem in my opinion.
Simultaneous critiques and submissions have been tried before, I think, and would probably be fine during the 2nd and 3rd round, but I think it is somewhat confusing to have everyone submit quarterfinal cards and then go back and say "only these 8 players actually made it". If I understand Ryder's proposal correctly, this happens again with the semifinals, where all 8 quarterfinalists submit but then get paired up when you figure out who passed the quarterfinals. In the past, I have enjoyed challenges that are personalized to your opponent, like "make a version of your opponent's legendary creature in another color" or whatever, and this would make that difficult.
Like you may have guessed from what I wrote above, those aren't among my favorites at all instead, but that doesn't count. I agree that the overlapping design and critiques get weird when you arrive in the elimination rounds. For example, I've already submitted a card for May semifinals, but very probably I won't reach them. That's not a problem for me, but I agree this is really weird.
I would like to float a different proposal to give the CCL more breathing room; cut one or more of the elimination rounds.
I like this as I've already mentioned.
I think the eliminated players often lose interest after quarter and semifinals and fail to vote in the finals.
I've always voted even when already eliminated, but I've always wondered why there are so few people voting in the final CCL polls, and this may be the reason. I've never thought of that before.
I always liked the quarterfinal round when we had each of the 8 players critique and pick a Top 3 from the other 7, because those players were usually pretty invested and provided interesting feedback.
Agreed. 100%.
Here are a couple of ways we could restructure the elimination rounds:
Everyone critiques the Round 3 submissions and you get the top 2 from each team to advance. I think 8 (or more if there are more teams) is too many options for an effective poll, so these people should critique each other. You could end based on those rankings or cut half the players for one more round.
You could cut to just the top player from each team (both can advance for ties). Have them do a final challenge and go directly to a public poll. Specifically, I would recommend a multiple choice poll and assume that each of the players votes for themselves (plus any other competitors they want to vote for).
I personally like the first option much more than the second one.
I'd like to avoid any rounds where only the host judges, since the CCL is all about multiple peer opinions.
Agreed 100% here too.
Perhaps ironically, the final polls are often where you get the least feedback, since people just vote and don't post any comments.
I always do this in fact. Now that you let me think of that, I agree it's not good and I may start critiquing final submissions too from this month. I just never thought about this either.
I think 4 options might actually make for a better poll since it would be a bit broader competition.
Let's just hope enough people would vote to have a meaningful outcome. I'm already imagining a vote ending with all 4 contestants tied at 1 or 2 votes, no more.
So with those suggestions you could cut down to 5 or even 4 rounds total, allowing as much as a week. You could try a schedule like below.
1st to 7th: Round 1, long to allow for plenty of people to see it and get in.
8th to 12th: Teams assigned for critiquing of Round 1 and Round 2 submissions
13th to 17th: Critique Round 2, Round 3 submissions
18th to 20th: Critique Round 3
21st to 24th: Top 2 from each team submit for semifinals (normally 8 players)
25th to 27th: Peer critique of everyone else in the semifinals, cut to finals (normally 4)
28th to end of month: Final submissions
1st to 7th of following month: Final poll open during this time and advertised in Round 1 of the next CCL
This schedule looks very reasonable to me, and I'd like to try it one month. Whatever thing we do, voting in the final poll for one month should never be a requirement to enter the following month's round 1. You didn't suggest that, but I remember it was mentioned in an eariler post.
Let me know what you guys think.
I just did! Hope this helps!
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MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016 DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for: "Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index.Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Cool, sounds like we are pretty close to working something out then.
I don't think I've ever played with a looping list, although I believe I saw this setup; people are asked to critique the next X people after them on the player list, right? That must be where the mention of global scoring also came in. Is the system assuming 100% critique participation, then? I'm not the best statistician, but it seems like that poses some problems as well if anyone misses their critiques. If I was supposed to get 5 critiques and 3 of them weren't submitted, I'm not going to get the same range of opinions as someone who got 5 critiques, even if you correct for percentage of possible points.
I would agree that, if the CCL does move forward without groups, everyone should get the same challenge. Different challenges for different groups was fine when the groups only competed within themselves. I do think some really fun creative stuff was done with that; for example, in one of the last CCLs I was in, Asrama split us up by emotions and had the Love group come up with a memento of our loved one while the Revenge group made a weapon, or something like that.
Yeah, I don't think voting in the finals is required to participate in Round 1 next month, just a good place to advertise.
It's definitely good to get the host's feedback at least on the final round, whether that is just a write up or providing an actual Top 3. I think the host's vote should be reserved to break ties in a poll.
Do you guys prefer ending with a peer critique round, like 8 people critiquing each other, or having a poll?
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I'm always open to critque, and I do make mistakes. I felt your point in this case was valid and reconsidered. I don't consider what you said being a jerk. I wish more people were open to critique. No worries
You too!
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
Sure, I accept your challenge. Woulda said something sooner but I've been out of commission with strep.
No change here.
I know this has been done in the past, but I'm not sure giving different tasks to different players or teams is that fair. What if one has a more difficult challenge than another? It's quite hard to make a number of challenges of the same difficulty as host.
So it becomes like the MCC in that you have to enter in round 1, rather than anytime until round 3. I think this is more formal than substantial of a change, as if you entered in round 3 it was already almost impossible for you to accumulate enough points to pass, so this is a change I can accept without any significant problems.
The second sentence here means that the quarterfinals may have more than eight players, any number actually. For example, this month there are five groups, so if this will be applied we will have ten players in the quarterfinals. I don't have any problem with this personally, I just think this needs to be crystal clear, as until now the quarterfinals have always been a top 8.
This requires at least 16 players to be properly done. What if there are less of them? If I recall correctly, it happened sometimes. We make groups with three players, giving only two points to the first, one to the second and zero to the third? Are we sure that is fair for players in larger groups?
At the contrary of before, this time in the semifinals we will still have a top 4 no matter what. The problem I see here is one the MCC has, but the CCL had not until now. For example, let's say the standings in the two groups are as follows (groups are A and B and players 1 to 4, scores are completely made up to show the point):
Player A1: 20
Player A2: 18
Player A3: 13
Player A4: 9
Player B1: 27
Player B2: 12
Player B3: 11
Player B4: 10
The top four are (in order) B1, A1, A2, A3, and with the top 4 system they would advance. With this new system, A1, A2, B1, and B2 advance instead. In particular, between A3 and B2, A3 has more points (the total points in each group are always 60, so it doesn't make a difference) but he/she is eliminated, while B2 has less points but advances. This happens all the time in the MCC with brackets and it's the only thing I don't like in the MCC, but it never happened in the CCL with the top X system. Are we sure we want to introduce this to the CCL?
How? It should be specified. There should be some objective criteria, otherwise this will just turn to the host's personal and subjective preference. This is a critical point in my opinion.
See the previous point. On which bases does the host pick who advances?
No change here.
This is a very welcome change on my part, as it directly deals with the main problem I had in February in my only experience so far as CCL host. It was just too frantic. I had a schedule, but after just a couple rounds where people were late it went completely out the window. Almost every day I had to pm people who weren't posting cards or critiques. The rhythm was just too fast if I wanted to fit it all in the month, which I really wanted and tried to do but only to discover that it's practically impossible. That's why I was planning to not host the CCL again at least in the short run. These changes should better this problem, so they could make me re-evaluate that if they're applied.
See above the point about the standings. The division in teams is exactly what generates the potential problem I'm talking above.
This is a necessary evil that comes from overlapping the critiques of one round with the design phase of the following one, which I love as a change, so I'm more than open to accepting this too.
In groups of four people, asking for a top 3 or a full ranking is practically the same thing. It changes only for groups of five people (I'd say "or more", but we said groups of more than five people aren't allowed). This is what requires the "normalization" procedure, but I did that myself so no problem here.
The last sentence is a wonderful idea and badly needed. I do my best to give thorough and thought out critiques, and I see people getting away with one word judgments who don't effectively give any feedback at all. I'm not making a case out of this and neither I would want to, but it's something that had to be dealt with somehow. In February, I had to give the same bonus point to both kind of players, because technically those were the rules, but it didn't feel right.
Until these are only suggestions, it's fine. I wouldn't want to impose everyone a specific rubric, the MCC is the place for that level of strictness.
This is practically the same thing I did in February, so I definitely agree with this. Beside that, some form of normalization is needed to account for groups with different numbers of players.
Hopefully we're able to stick to that schedule and actually be done on the 5th of the following month, instead of the 10th-15th as is unfortunately usual for the CCL. For example, today is May 16th and we still don't have the official winner for April (even if we might guess who it's going to be from how the vote is going)! This is another ongoing problem in my opinion, and if we're able to solve that, good!
Overall, these are good changes that could solve some ongoing problems in the CCL, but we need to pay attention not to introduce more potential problems, such as the one about the standings I talked above.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I have some qualms with the new rules you are proposing. I would of played this past month, but with how the rounds were already pre divided into groups and after missing the first one, It kinda felt unwelcome. I really have always enjoyed how the first 3 rounds of the CCL were less formal and did not require me to participate in each (despite the advantage in doing so.) CCL has kind of been a bridge as a more casual design competition then the MCC and I'm worried the making it more formal will negate that distinction.
The idea the we have to submit cards in advance without knowing if we move on to the next round is a huge con to your proposed system and has the potential to leave many players bitter and waste there efforts. Additionally, there is a lot of subjectivity left to the organizer in terms of tie breakers and whether or not a players critiques are worth one or two points based on brevity. The final major note I have at the moment is that the proposed ranking system, where you judge not a top 3 but every one in order and assign points scaling upward. As I understand it if one group has 4 players and the other has 5, the one with 5 players have more points to earn. That doesn't seem reasonable. I realize the opposite case where top 3s taken from different group sizes aren't 100% balanced either, but it does put players up for the same number of possible points in a group verses everyone having a relative score. All that ranking system does is favor being in larger groups than smaller ones instead of vice versa, and the advantage seems larger than it was before.
Does that mean you'd still include it in a group to be judged? If not, that's a fruitless suggestion.
I think more players will be annoyed at making entries that are disqualified then taking a few more days into the next month. This is really my biggest concern.
If you're formalizing everything else, that's inconsistent.
Potentially arbitrary. Consider:
"I don't like the card. It's pretty weak and dull. Also, the name is annoying."
Vs.
"I think this card would only be played as a fringe card in limited and wouldn't excite players between having a generic flavor and no abilities that appeal to any of the major psychographics."
According to you, the first would get more points.
I can do math and understand the division, thank you. I think I spoke poorly in describing my point. By making it so everyone except the person in last gets some amount of points, your weighing an advantage towards larger groups since your more likely to get something rather than nothing. Its not that there is an imbalance in the calculating the scores, its that 4th place in one group will net you points while in another you'll get nothing. Overall, a larger groups is "safer" for earning some amount a points. I suppose the reverse was true before, but which method is more fair? The more I think about it the more I'm unsure.
Really though in breaking everything down, after smoothing over some inconsistencies in how formal you're making this I think it'd be fine to test. Except the whole submit your cards in advance in case you pass thing. That is perhaps the one element I'm vehemently against.
I wrote a detailed response to this but it got lost due to misclicking. I don't want to retype everything again, so I'll just summarize what I wrote.
If it really just took "a few days into the next month" it'd be fine, but the reality is that it's habitual for the CCL to take at least until the half of the following month, and that's a very big problem from my own point of view. I tried setting a schedule to fit everything in a few days more than one month when I was host in February but failed because I needed each round to last no more than 3 days for design and 3 days for critiques, but there were people who didn't post in 5 days. I had to pm such people everyday often with no result and a lot of frustation on my part. I'm not pretending all people being as active as myself on the forum, of course, but we have to acknowledge that with the classic system it's impossible to fit everything in one month, so we have only two options:
1- Keep the classic system, but set the standard duration of the CCL to six weeks (a month and a half) instead of a month, with each round lasting exactly one week (say four days for design and three for critiques, for example), but acknowledge that by mentioning both months in the name, for example "April/May CCL" instead of just "April CCL". It's no longer just the "April CCL" if it takes until a few days ago (May 16th or 17th if I recall correctly) to have a winner.
2- Try something new like Ryder did this month, with its advantages and disadvantages.
This is the basic choice we have to make as the CCCG community, and of course we need to make it together.
About this I just wanted to point out that instead I have always felt that distinction, even when I was just a lurker. I also think that it's good to have the different contests have scaling grades of strictness and formality: the DCC has the lowest, the MCC has the most, and the CCL is in the middle. That's confirmed by my own experience in all three, and that's good, because there are people who don't enjoy too much strictness and formality and there are other people who feel a real need for them instead. I know this for certain from pm discussions I've been having with people from both camps. This way each player can choose the contest(s) that best suits his or her own preferences.
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
How is it irrelevant for the first 3 rounds? If I'm in a group of 4 for one round and someone else is in a group of 5, and we both place 4th every time with every judge , in the smaller group I would be award 0 points by every judge and in the larger group they would be awarded 1 per judge. Right? It doesn't matter that It's being divided based on how many people are in a group because a number great than 0 divided by a number is always great than 0 divided by a number. Unless I am completely misunderstanding the gist of your scoring.
That means that they come out better then I would for determining averages later, correct? This is different than the old system as points where only given to the top 3 regardless. One system favors smaller groups and the other larger. It's not to say that one is "wrong" but they favor different things. Is that not true?
Ah I see what your saying now!
To me, that makes this not the CCL anymore. The whole cumulative score systems with finalist going to eliminations rounds is gone. Of the three elements I think of when it comes to the the CCL (peer judging, casual submission environment, point advancement qualifying to elimination rounds) you propose to eliminate 2 of them.
I can understand wanting to change the timing to make things fit more evenly into a month, but the rest of this changes just seem like you want a different competition than the CCL.
From the past year or two's perspective, I'm on point. I've only actively participated in the CCL for the past year, but those elements are what made it different for me. Looking back a bit further, it's been several years that there was some point accumulation. "Relative" is really subjective here.
If you want to start a poll, that's fine. Just don't wait until July (I'll be abroad on off the forums most of the month.) I don't want to miss my chance to vote and do an "absentee ballet" somehow haha.
Considering there have only been two people to comment on your proposed rules, anything that invovles more people would be an upgrade than just running off based on one posters whims.
To me, the fundamentals of the CCL are peer review and a series of flavorful challenges. I do also feel that there is a casual aspect to it as opposed to the MCC since you will get a variety of peer opinions. The biggest obstacles that the CCL faces are the work required to host it and the difficulties maintaining participation through the team rounds, getting critiques in particular. With that in mind, I'll address the specific points in discussion below.
Point System
Is there a big advantage to ranking everyone and giving points down to second to last as opposed to the Top 3? I agree that there doesn't seem to be a mathematical difference, but it can be hard to rank people when doing critiques, so Top 3 makes it a bit easier since you don't have to rank down to 4th, 5th, etc. It's also easier for the host since there are fewer numbers to keep track of, which is a big plus.
I am not sure what the current status quo is, but I am opposed to having scores counted across all players as opposed to within teams. Even with the percentage normalization, circumstances are often different for different teams (sometimes a team may only get one or two critiques, for example). I also think it's fun for each team to have different challenges in some rounds, so it is most fair for each team to only compete within their team to advance. The drawback is that you could have a strong team that sees strong designers eliminated and a team where a weaker player squeaks by, but the team selection should be random and I think both of those situations can be fun and keep a variety of players involved.
Length of the Contest
The CCL is definitely known to run well over a month. Simultaneous critiques and submissions have been tried before, I think, and would probably be fine during the 2nd and 3rd round, but I think it is somewhat confusing to have everyone submit quarterfinal cards and then go back and say "only these 8 players actually made it". If I understand Ryder's proposal correctly, this happens again with the semifinals, where all 8 quarterfinalists submit but then get paired up when you figure out who passed the quarterfinals. In the past, I have enjoyed challenges that are personalized to your opponent, like "make a version of your opponent's legendary creature in another color" or whatever, and this would make that difficult.
I would like to float a different proposal to give the CCL more breathing room; cut one or more of the elimination rounds. I think the eliminated players often lose interest after quarter and semifinals and fail to vote in the finals. I always liked the quarterfinal round when we had each of the 8 players critique and pick a Top 3 from the other 7, because those players were usually pretty invested and provided interesting feedback. Here are a couple of ways we could restructure the elimination rounds:
So with those suggestions you could cut down to 5 or even 4 rounds total, allowing as much as a week. You could try a schedule like below.
Let me know what you guys think.
I agree both about the peculiarity of the CCL being its peer review system, and about the casual aspect. In my experience as CCL host, the greatest and worst part of the work wasn't the calculations involved, those require just a few minutes if you set up an Excel spreadsheet, but having to continously try to contact people who didn't post cards or critiques almost every day, often with no results. Whatever system we implement, we have to make sure participants are active enough. We should allow each round the right amount of time, enough to be seen by all people involved but not so much that the contest extends too long into the next month.
I also think a top 3 is enough. Also, it helps with the possibility that critiquing groups (if you make them) might include a different number of players.
Are we sure teams are needed at all? Was something wrong with the critique list system? To me, the looping list still feels the best critique system: each player critiques the same amount of cards so there aren't problems like groups having a different number of players, and if each player submits critiques (like they should, maybe we can think of some harsher penalty for not submitting critiques, like someone already proposed?) there's no need for normalization. Also, there are no problems like one group being made of stronger people, because no player critiques the same group of players. To me, it looks like having groups instead of the looping list might introduce more problems than it solves. Of course, I'm thinking of a looping list that's always randomized in each round.
Here I strongly disagree. To me, having different challenges for different players in the same round is wrong, and I've never liked rounds where that happened as lurker. It never happened to me as a player, but if it happened I can only imagine I would like it even less. It may be a rare exception to shake things up sometimes, but shouldn't be any more than that in my opinion. I just don't see it as fair. It's very hard to make different challenges of the same difficulty as host. If I'm in the group of players who got the more difficult challenge I might wonder why did others get an easier challenge.
See above. With the looping list system, this drawback is not there. Also from here I get that we have a different concept of "fun", but it makes sense because fun is highly subjective. To me those example situations are not fun at all, but I'd rather call them unfair. Yes, I'm a Spike and I don't like variance... but don't ever let my own opinion prevail on that of the majority. This is just my own opinion, and I'll never say that enough.
And this is a problem. Maybe the biggest one from my point of view. The fact that it's always been like this is not a justification to me. I've understood why it's like this with my hosting experience: it's just impossible to have six rounds of design and critiques in one month. The average month is 30 days long, so if you have 6 rounds each of them needs to last no more than 5 days, and in those 5 days both design and critiques must be included. I tried in February to have a schedule with 3 days of design and 3 of critiques (so 6 total days instead of 5) and still failed because people weren't keeping the pace! That's why I said (and still say) that we need to either acknowledge that, embracing that fact until the end and thus calling it for example "April/May CCL" or do something about it. Overlapping design and critiques, and your suggestion that we could remove one round are both things that go in the right direction to solve this problem in my opinion.
Like you may have guessed from what I wrote above, those aren't among my favorites at all instead, but that doesn't count. I agree that the overlapping design and critiques get weird when you arrive in the elimination rounds. For example, I've already submitted a card for May semifinals, but very probably I won't reach them. That's not a problem for me, but I agree this is really weird.
I like this as I've already mentioned.
I've always voted even when already eliminated, but I've always wondered why there are so few people voting in the final CCL polls, and this may be the reason. I've never thought of that before.
Agreed. 100%.
I personally like the first option much more than the second one.
Agreed 100% here too.
I always do this in fact. Now that you let me think of that, I agree it's not good and I may start critiquing final submissions too from this month. I just never thought about this either.
Let's just hope enough people would vote to have a meaningful outcome. I'm already imagining a vote ending with all 4 contestants tied at 1 or 2 votes, no more. This schedule looks very reasonable to me, and I'd like to try it one month. Whatever thing we do, voting in the final poll for one month should never be a requirement to enter the following month's round 1. You didn't suggest that, but I remember it was mentioned in an eariler post.
I just did! Hope this helps!
MCC - Winner (6): Oct 2014, Apr Nov 2017, Jan 2018, Apr Jun 2019 || Host (15): Dec 2014, Apr Jul Aug Dec 2015, Mar Jul Aug Oct 2016, Feb Jul 2017, Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here) || Judge (34): every month from Nov 2014 to Nov 2016 except Oct 2015, every month from Feb to Jul 2017 except Apr 2017, then Oct 2017, May Jun Nov 2018, Feb Jul 2019 (last one here)
CCL - Winner (3): Jul 2016 (tied with Flatline), May 2017, Jul 2019 (last one here) || Host (5): Feb 2015, Mar Apr May Jun 2016
DCC - Winner (1): Mar 2015 (tied with Piar) || Host (3): May Oct 2015, Jan 2016
• The two public custom sets I've been part a part of the design team for:
"Brotherhood of Ormos" - Blog post with all info - set thread - design skeleton / card list || "Extinctia: Homo Evanuit" - Blog post with all info - set thread - card list spreadsheet
• "The Lion's Lair", my article series about MTG and custom card design in particular. Latest article here. Here is the article index. Rather outdated by now, and based on the old MCC rubric, but I'm leaving this here for anybody that might be interested anyway.
• My only public attempt at being a writer: the story of my Leonin custom planeswalker Jeff Lionheart. (I have a very big one that I'm working on right now but that's private for now, and I don't know if I will ever actually publish it, and I also have ideas for multiple future ones, including one where I'm going to reprise Jeff.)
I don't think I've ever played with a looping list, although I believe I saw this setup; people are asked to critique the next X people after them on the player list, right? That must be where the mention of global scoring also came in. Is the system assuming 100% critique participation, then? I'm not the best statistician, but it seems like that poses some problems as well if anyone misses their critiques. If I was supposed to get 5 critiques and 3 of them weren't submitted, I'm not going to get the same range of opinions as someone who got 5 critiques, even if you correct for percentage of possible points.
I would agree that, if the CCL does move forward without groups, everyone should get the same challenge. Different challenges for different groups was fine when the groups only competed within themselves. I do think some really fun creative stuff was done with that; for example, in one of the last CCLs I was in, Asrama split us up by emotions and had the Love group come up with a memento of our loved one while the Revenge group made a weapon, or something like that.
Yeah, I don't think voting in the finals is required to participate in Round 1 next month, just a good place to advertise.
It's definitely good to get the host's feedback at least on the final round, whether that is just a write up or providing an actual Top 3. I think the host's vote should be reserved to break ties in a poll.
Do you guys prefer ending with a peer critique round, like 8 people critiquing each other, or having a poll?