What % Of Bb Is Skill, And What Is Luck?

[Errant Saint]

Had a bit of an argument with a buddy over this and wondering what you guys think. Honest opinions please; and to that extent I've filtered out 100% of either because if that's what you honestly think then I'm not interested in your opinion.

 

Mind I'm talking BB over time and in general, I know that solitary games can have a wide margin in how much of either is involved.

 

Feel free to post your reasons for your opinions.

 

Personally I believe it's in the 70 - 30 skill range as that seems to be the average win ratio gap I see between coaches - factoring out as much as possible, things like MM power gaming or coaches that clearly just have no idea what they're doing. It seems like top coaches that don't handicap themselves seem to get max win % somewhere in the 70s, poor coaches still don't seem to drop much below 30s, and the rest of us muck about in the middle.

 

Anyway, curious as to what the rest of you think.

[meebee]

i voted 60:40

i played  "classic" battletech for over 10 years. That game is also dice based, but based upon 2 dice rolls.

if BB would be based upon 2 6 sided dices all the time, i would vote 80:20.

I found games based upon just 1 single dice roll results much more luck driven. (rolling 2 dices does not change the fact, that the 1 dice result does count, its just like rolling twice)

((Except armor rolls..  -  thats why having av7 is such a pain and disadvantage at higher tv)

Considering the fact, that its just one dice for the majority of rolls, it is less reliable.

Add the kickoff events...

The fact, that some teams are not balanced...

Failures and events do have much impact on the game.

 

Rolling 1 6 sided dice, the outcome is 50:50  lower half, upper half..

Rolling 2 6 sided dices, the average result is 7.

 

Anyways. Hard to explain.

But those are few points which led to my decision to vote like that.

 

Skill does help. But one can't be sure it will. Even the worst coach is able to beat the best, anytime if he is in nuffles favour.

I somewhat agree with Errant Saint, that it could also be 70:30.

There was no 65:35 

[Errant Saint]

Just imagine it rounded as rough ranges. I just didn't want the poll to be cluttered or gigantic. My 70 : 30 is a soft approximation as well.

[Smiling Tom]

Keeping in mind how punishing the game is at failing a dice roll (most of the times means a turn over) the key of the game seems to be about gambling and setting enough contingency plans in case a particular roll is failed. So, at the beginning when you start it's really a 30-70 game but as you keep playing more and understand that the key is to a) learn how to minimize bad rolls and b ) learn to capitalize opponent's bad rolls it goes to a 70-30. But I know I am not even there, neither is the average player. On that behalf, I stick with the 60-40 option too.

[raikaria]

Dice play a massive role. Especially in a perpetual leauge where there is player development and injury rolls that matter and can effect a coach's future as well.

 

Honestly; I say 50:50. In a non-perpetual standpoint/individual game; I would say 70:30 or 60:40 because team development and injuries are moot; but the simply fact is that the luck of injuries that cripple one's best players or the luck or rolling doubles or a 10/11/12 gives one coach a pretty massive advantage over the other.

 

And then you have the standard things like the 1-in-6 at best chance to fail any dice roll. Bearing in mind most teams are AG3; meaning most die rolls are 50/50 by default.

 

A coach's skill can minimize the risk of rolling dice. A coach's luck might not give a damn about their skill and give them :zAD: when it matters.

 

Also the ratio changes when playing luck-based teams. Vampires and probobly Ogres and Halflings would be 40:60 from a perpetual standpoint; and Goblins 30:70. Sorry but you need more luck when playing teams who have to roll dice every time they try to do anything than if you are playing Chaos.

 

@ SmilingTom: Surely if a new player; who has less skill; is more luck-dependant; that is just the luck making a larger impact due to the lack of skill? By your reckoning that's still a 70:30 / 60:40 split. A skilled player would beat the unskilled player 70%/60% of the time.

[dode]

A large part of the skill is assessing not only the odds but mitigating for the failures.  The saying "you make your own luck" is as true here as it is anywhere, and blaming the dice for rolling cold misses the point that you could have foreseen those failures and mitigated for them.  One of my own major weaknesses in the game is that I often make a "clutch" play which, if it works, gives me the game and, if it fails, may well lose the game for me and demoralises me.  I am slowly working on ways to mitigate for such failures, and it's probably why I am better at a conservative bash defence than I am at a flair-based offence.  Saying it's largely down to luck ignores the impact of the skill involved in the above.

[Smiling Tom]

Not only less chances but also rookie players takes a LOT more risks, and those lead to exploitable situations by more skilled players most of the time, however that time when the 6s roll for the rookie beat any contingency one might have placed and can turn the tide. We all have seen those impossible strings of dodges, GFIs and 1D unskilled block against blodgers succeeding and ending with the ball out of bounds that should happen 1 in 50 times yet they happen. The more experienced players get, the more reluctant they get at taking such risks, thus luck plays a lesser impact in the final outcome

[cpervert]

im playing this game for 14 years now and i have to say its 50-50 in general... why? because lets be honest the game is about rolling dices basically rng from the field to the skills. 

 

A good player as all of you said will play "safer" and "smarter" and not take risks unless he has calculate them. He will also skill his team with a plan! but in all honesty i've seen a guy (Don Tomasso i think fro fumbble) that had a human team with 5 stats increase, or another guy that was breaking armor like there is no tomorrow (avg 3,7 cas per game, we had 10 of them)

 

i ve seen a guy play with me with no rr on rookie humans.... only 2 turn overs

 

ive made a guy cry after i dodged 8 times pick up the ball from 3 tz and made a long bomb with ag 5...

 

so basically i think this game is way to random to actually think that skill will go that high. they should put a luck factor like fumbble has :P

[Doomy77]

When I win? Pure skill. When my opponent wins? Well, obviously he just got lucky.

[bjj hero]

Id go 80-20.

Otherwise how did Flix win season on season? How do the same guys win TT tournaments over and over again?

There are lots of factors, choosing the right team (we all know theyre not created equal), choosing skills. Playing conservative and cutting out "must work" dice rolls. When to apo, use of inducements. All of these are skill based.

[Juriel]

I say 80-20. Individual games can be luck-driven and aggravating as hell, but over time, the consistently good coaches will rise to the top.

 

Your team's tier (as in Elves and Chaos are better than Humans, who are better than Underworld, who are better than Goblins) plays as much of a role as the dice.

[Pidpad]

As we're looking over time, rather than individual games I went for 80-20 (what I'd really want is 85-15). 

There's many things that point me toward this and to mention just a few that people might be able to relate to here on OCC.

 

Stygger, Robbo, straume getting 3 different races to div1 (might be others that I forget). 

Me going 39 games without a loss with a largely undeveloped high elf team (well,for the first 20 or so games at least).

Flix winning 5 titles in a row.

 

Those things point toward skill being highly influential. Sure, Flix team was amazing at the start, but certainly less so near the end and the opposite can be said about my high elf team.

Good coaches generally do well with new teams as well. I've seen former div1 coaches re-roll something and then dominate their divisions early, despite being at a TV disadvantage. I'd say thats the norm rather than an abonormality.

[meebee]

if you bring gobbos, ogres and flings up to tier 1 and win at least 1 seson there, i will believe in your 80:20.

 

or we could change the queston to: "how much is it luck driven, once both coaches play same teams with same tv."

otherwise i can´t agree.

for me, i.e., i do play amazones, because i like the flavour of the team most. not because i think they perform best.

and i bet it is the same with all those goblin, ogre and fling coaches around..

 

unbalanced teamstrenght  is also the reason, why some leagues have a race restriction.

simply to prevent having all coaches play the same few, best performing races for competition.

Sure. Some coaches can do the unexpected with weaker races, but in the long run, some races just do better than others.

 

Don´t be mistaken. i still believe, if you let 2 coaches play the same szenarios over and over again - both of them playing either side several times..

finally the better coach will be the one who does perform better.

But thats not how it goes in a coaches live.

 

And i agree the most with Doomy:

"When I win? Pure skill. When my opponent wins? Well, obviously he just got lucky."

[Pidpad]

Looking at goblins, ogres and halflings as a point of reference seems somewhat silly. They are by design worse than the other teams, so if anything success in div1 with them would be a sign, to me at least, of good fortune.

Look at the other races and why some people have success with very different races (Robbo: Khemri, Skaven and High elf, Stygger: Chaos, High Elf, straume: orc, lizard, chaos dwarf). 

I've finished 2nd with lizards and won with high elves.

 

I'd argue that people who have had success (in this case getting to div1) with different races show that they're skillful and can overcome the luck factor in most games.

[jbecks]

^ played cheating elfs with av8 :P real men coach pro elfs

[Pidpad]

Repeat what I did, then I'll play pro elves. :p

[Bantha]

Yes 80-20 is the shit...

 

50/50 is just silly to state, play vs AI and lose a lot would mean 50/50.. there are so many factors in here.

But above all else you have to have a skill and a feeling to play this game properly.

[Hobnail]

I've gone 90-10.

 

As others have stated, in BB it doesnt take even a perpetual league for the cream to rise to the top. Six games is largely enough. I doesnt matter whether you are talking 6 game TT resurrection tournaments where the usual suspects win time after time, or a perpetual league like this where the same coaches gravitate towards T1/T2 time after time - either way, class wins.........for the reasons outlined by dode.

 

(and if there had been a higher option, I'd have risked the fury of the author of the OP by choosing that too)

[Errant Saint]

Saying all skill is nonsense. In UKBBL I just beat Zunk 4-0. I'd like to think I played well but that was not a result determined by skill. Therefore 100% skill is impossible. As for high 90s, well like I said I rounded the poll numbers to 10s to keep it fairly neat. I picked 70:30 but think it's probably closer to 75:25; I wouldn't disagree with anyone going for 60:40 or 80:20 either. (Though the point of this thread was genuine curiousity, not to bicker or prove a point.)

 

if you bring gobbos, ogres and flings up to tier 1 and win at least 1 seson there, i will believe in your 80:20.

If this were ever to happen, you'd have to look at the coach in question to determine if it would slant toward skill or luck. You've named the 3 weakest races in BB (imo) and challenged somebody to win the largest BB league around with them. Even getting to Div 1 with those races, I think, would involve a lot of both skill and luck. It's like saying I won't believe there is skill in basketball til a team of midgets win the NBA.

 

I'll go one step further and (as I think Muffin said in the necro podcast,) say that luck is a bigger factor in Div 1 than anywhere else. Why? Because by then you have the top 10 of the biggest league and it's safe to say that the majority, if not all, are very skilled coaches. With skill between coaches being fairly close, luck starts to play more of a factor. From things like team health, blessed level rolls, calendar order, or that 1 important roll that tips the scales. Vs. a lesser coach it's easier to overcome\recover from a bit of misfortune, in Div 1 you'll find little respite.

[bjj hero]

I would say a lot of genetic freak teams make it to div1strength 5 darkelves and such. Although that alone will not get you to the top it cant hurt.

[dode]

With skill between coaches being fairly close, luck starts to play more of a factor.

Well duh

[Blackcat75]

I had to go with 70-30

 

Playing before this league I didn't do to badly for myself. And took myself for a better than average coach.

 

Then I joined the OCC and saw what real skill at this game looked like. I now have a much more honest opinion about my ability here. But luck does favor heavily into it regardless. But luck will not get you a winning record, just some wins.  But luck can destroy a winning record team.

 

Is the luck so heavy that a good coach will not win more than he loses... nope.

 

But it is heavy enough to skew things regardless of skill.

[Jakerbeef]

Damn Hobnail. 90/10? You have stared into the abyss and truly taken all dice on the chin!

 

 

I've gone 50/50.

 

I was tempted to say 60/40 but I've played enough games, enough coaches and seen so much head-scratching, mind-melting, heinous dice atrocities that I can't bring myself to say that luck doesn't play an equal factor to skill.

 

A chump can beat a pro with good dice. Saurus can pull off an endzone-to-endzone maneuver, a beclawed maniac team can tickle halflings all day and lose their legend to the first foul in t16...

 

All the mitigating in the world can still end up in the rug being pulled from under your feet. Over a long enough period of time, dice do not even out, they just increase the chance of something incredible happening. Hence, Nuffle.

 

This is a glass half-full question. On any given roll it can all go horribly wrong.

[St. Cloud]

70-30 sounds about right to me as well.

 

On any given matchday nuffle can be the great equalizer and give players of all skill levels a big W even against the most skilled players. But over time its always the good players that rise to the top. If the best player plays the worst player with comparable teams 100 times the better player will win 80-90 of the games.

 

The winning record isn't the definitve bench mark as other things -leagues played in, races choosen- factor into that. But it still gives a good idea of the level of play.

[dode]

I've gone 50/50.

 

I was tempted to say 60/40 but I've played enough games, enough coaches and seen so much head-scratching, mind-melting, heinous dice atrocities that I can't bring myself to say that luck doesn't play an equal factor to skill.

 

A chump can beat a pro with good dice. Saurus can pull off an endzone-to-endzone maneuver, a beclawed maniac team can tickle halflings all day and lose their legend to the first foul in t16...

 

All the mitigating in the world can still end up in the rug being pulled from under your feet. Over a long enough period of time, dice do not even out, they just increase the chance of something incredible happening. Hence, Nuffle.

 

This is a glass half-full question. On any given roll it can all go horribly wrong.

Perception bias plays a part here. You remember that which goes wrong more than you remember that which goes right. Hence the tendency to blame and, imo, put to much emphasis on the dice.