Surely his point was that the “rules” can go hang, when the culture of the league was more laid back, and just for people to have a little fun.
Its like you and five mates having a kick-about outside, except one twat wants everybody to play the offside rule. Yeah, hes right, its in the rules, but fuck him hes ruining our game.
I am in a couple of fantasy leagues (soccer) but if they ever for a second had ANY negative effect on me socially, I would drop them like a bad habit.
Yeah, I hate the guys who enforce the hand ball rule, myself. Who cares if I grab the ball and run across the field? It’s not the World Cup, for fuck’s sake. I’m just trying to have fun.
Yeah, it’s clear from his book that he believes that there is One Way To Play, and everything else is a waste of time. If you’re not playing flat-out to win no matter what, you’re not playing properly.
It’s a very pure attitude, but somewhat sterile … .
I was pretty much on your side until this post. You have clearly demonstrated that you just don’t get it, and I totally understand how the rest of your league grew tired of your attitude. I’d bet good money you won’t be invited back next year.
I’ve read some of his stuff, and he’s a moron. Some of the made up rules are necessary to enjoyment of the game, but he doesn’t seem to be aware of the concept of enjoyment of playing a game. The sum total of his enjoyment seems to be the final score.
I’m totally on board with the idea that gamers are way too quick to cry “cheese!”, but that doesn’t by definition mean that cheese is an invalid concept. He went way too far the other way.
Let’s say your mates are having a kick-about outside, and everyone’s wearing clogs and getting blisters. You decide, “Hey - I’ll wear…<check English-British dictionary>…trainers, and I’ll be able to actually run instead of wobble about and be ineffective and in terrible pain!” Then they kick you off the field for being a wanker, or force you to wear clogs.
Changing the rules post-draft is absolutely bush league. It’s not “we just want to have fun”, it’s not “casual” - it’s bush league. In Brit-speak - it’s not cricket.
No, his analogy was near perfect, while yours misses the point. The rest of the OP’s league just wants a mellow league where they don’t have to think about it every single day. The OP’s participation is clearly much higher than that, and the rest of them just don’t want to be bothered. There is nothing in their style of play that is uncomfortable for them like your clogs analogy. In fact, it’s quite the opposite. They are comfortable with minor participation; making them compete against a high level opponent will turn it into an uncomfortable experience like wearing clogs.
The offsides analogy is right on point. You need the offsides rule if you’re going to play with professionals with strong motivation to win. Because without it, you’ll just get a bunch of campers and soon you won’t be playing soccer anymore. But in a friendly game, nobody is going to care if the players are slightly ahead of the ball because nobody is going to go out of their way to exploit this advantage.
Now add one person who will exploit this advantage to its fullest because their primary source of enjoyment is winning. That will absolutely ruin it for the rest of the players because now they’re forced to insititute an offsides rule. They don’t want to be bothered with that level of nitpicking and rules lawyering. Now they have to put in a bunch of extra effort that they didn’t want to deal with to enforce a rule they don’t care about because one guy was exploiting an advantage they had no interest in.
Totally agreed. This is a given. Casual players by definition should be perfectly content to play for second.
Take whomever’s side you want, but understand MY point. I “get” what you’re saying just fine. You just don’t get what I’m saying.
I don’t know most of these people. Nobody sat around and said, “Hey, we don’t like adding and dropping too many players, that’s not fun for us.” Nobody said ANYTHING. And there is NOTHING wrong with streaming. NOTHING. Why are you acting like it’s such an onerous burden? It’s adding one or two players to your team every day. It’s like a three minute commitment. What’s the point of a league where you don’t participate every day? Stop acting like I was expecting so much out of them. If they didn’t want to play every day then why did they choose a league with daily roster changes?
But let’s accept your point, that I should refrain for the sake of “fun.” What is “acceptable” and what’s not? Is two moves per week too much? Is it five? When does it turn into “cutthroat?” You don’t know. Nobody does. And that’s my point. All you have to depend on are the rules that are decided upon and the RULES UNDER WHICH EVERYONE JOINED THE LEAGUE. This is not fucking mandatory public elementary school, you don’t like the settings, DON’T PLAY.
The “perfect” analogy is playing soccer with your mates outside and you’ve already written all the rules and that offsides will be enforced, and it is under that presumption that everybody plays. Then when someone cites the rule about offsides, everyone complains that it’s not fun anymore.
How many times do I have to say it? You don’t like streaming, rule it out, but before the season and not midway through the year when you find yourself losing. If I hadn’t been in first place, nobody would have complained.
And when did I ever say I was looking to get invited next year? I don’t want anything to do with a league that chooses to change the rules because they didn’t think it through beforehand and doesn’t have the integrity to leave the settings as they are. Nobody grew “tired of my attitude,” I already said, nobody asked me anything. I never said a word to the league while it was underway. I didn’t have an “attitude.” Only after I left did I leave them attitude.
Well your big giant diatribe definitely confirms that you are the last guy you’d ever want to join your casual league. This quote in particular is an hysterical example of just not getting it:
Perhaps you’re right, I’m indeed the last guy you’d want in your casual league. Just as much as your post definitely confirms that you’re the last guy I would ever want as my lawyer. It’s an analogy, smart guy. You know how those work? It’s equating one particular with another particular. I played by the analogy you were using yourself. Fantasy leagues have pages upon pages of enumerated rules that everyone understands they must abide by, so if you’re even going to attempt to liken it to a pickup soccer game, you’ve gotta even those aspects out.
Not only didn’t you get it, you appear incapable of getting it.
Here’s a clue for you: In a casual pickup game, nobody in their right mind would ever write out any rules. That’s nerdthink of the highest order. That’s why the original analogy was on point while your refutation was patently absurd.
EDIT: And I guarantee you that the people in your league do NOT have “pages and pages” of rules.
Oh my god, are we really having this discussion? Do you really not grasp comparisons? It’s like if I said the Saints offense in the first quarter is like a Ferrari going 165 MPH on the interstate and you keep insisting that nobody would drive that fast because his insurance rates might go up. I mean, that’s not the point.
And yeah, there ARE pages and pages of rules. You can see them for yourself if you don’t believe me.
Use weekly lineups. Have game limits. Focus on rate stats. Any of those options require pages of rules, but merely picking a setting on yahoo.
I don’t like leagues that encourage streaming either, but if the rules allow it, then participants are well within their right to take advantage. I don’t care how casual a league is, the goal still is to win, and you can’t expect players to ignore an obvious strategy that you have made no effort to prevent. And if you screw up and a player finds a loophole, you play through the season and fix it for the next season. Changing rules in midstream is just asking for a trainwreck.
You don’t change rules mid-game, or mid-season, ever. If they all really had a problem with how he was playing, they could have not invited him back next season, or picked up the players he was streaming and dropping them to reset their waiver timer.
Personally, I would have tried even harder to win once they changed the rules. It’s more satisfying to shove it in people’s faces that you’re going to win even if they all band together and change the rules just to stop you. Then I’d retire with the belt. If you’re okay being petty and vindictive, email them every season to remind them they can’t even win by cheating.
I’d also like to point out how amusing it is to have someone write an entire book about how people complain about cheapness in games like Street Fighter, all the while relying on the faulty premise that the game is actually fair and balanced.
Two years ago I was trying to get back into baseball after not paying much attention for a few years. I had been a huge fan when I was younger (maybe… 7-8 years ago) and was really big into fantasy baseball. I had never done a roto league, and I knew that fantasy sports increases my enjoyment of a sport by ten times, so I joined three random roto baseball leagues on ESPN.
For whatever reason, I never actually checked those teams. Not once. I’ve never had this problem before or since, but I completely forgot about every single team I drafted. I went back into the fantasy section this last year for baseball again (having still no memory of drafting those teams), and found I had won every single one of those leagues (or two of the three, I don’t remember exactly, but I know I won 2). I didn’t even draft particularly well (had a player who was hurt for 75% of the season starting on every team, I think it was Jim Thome?). It was a neat thing to see. I wish I could have enjoyed it.
Man, what a bush league, er league. Agree with ReticulatingSplines 100% on this. If you join a fantasy league, or any other even semi-structured event where you keep score, you either a) try/want to win, in which case you make sure you’re aware of the rules and such, and play accordingly, and don’t complain when others do just that, or b) couldn’t care less about winning, in which case you don’t complain when you don’t win. That’s it, there is no middle ground here. The rest of the league violated either a) or b).
There is -zero- excuse for changing the rules midway through the season. The only time I can see doing any such tweaking is when the rules are unclear on a particular point (my fantasy football league last year needed to decide how to determine our league champion when the championship round resulted in a tie!).
In fairness to Sirlin, the whole book isn’t about “how people complain about cheapness in games like Street Fighter”. The book is about how to develop the mindset of a *professional *game player. He says right up front that if you’re interested in playing for fun, then he’s not writing for you, and, in fact, many of the things that he does to win are explicitly not fun to do. He doesn’t play games the way I play games, but he does have an interesting perspective on how players negotiate their own informal constraints to augment the official rules.
This is true. But he advocates that all games be designed for the professional game player, and if you’re not playing as a professional game player, you’re a scrub.
Dude, you really have missed the point. It’s like in Stand By Me when Vern asks Gordy if Lard-Ass had to pay to enter the pie-eating contest. Fucking missed the point.
So here it is. Rules allow “a.” In fact, scoring is set up to encourage “a.” Everyone in the league is capable of “a,” but only the OP bothers. The OP wins. The others whine. The bitch of a commish changes the rules mid season. This is some bullshit. Punk ass bullshit.
Here’s a basketball analogy if you like. The guys go out to play 4 on 4 half court. The organizer points out the three point line and notes regular baskets are one, threes are worth two (this is common where I am from), back court is the half court line. Scoring team gets the ball back. Our OP is one of two captains tasked with picking teams and he knows he’s getting the ball first. Games are to 20. The OP scoops up the good outside shooters, all shorter than the other team. Midway through his 12-0 romp of the other side, they take threes off the table and says you no longer have to backcourt. Our OP, who didn’t pick any power guys, is now at a decided disadvantage. This is horseshit.
So a bunch of guys go for a quick fun game of basketball. Five minutes later and 12 - 0 down they realise, “this blows”, and ask to even the teams out to make it competitive?
One of the other guys says this is bullshit, “you can’t change the rules halfway through.”
“Fuck it then” say the casual players, you know, the ones who had better things to think about. They head to the bar and laugh at the petty guy for whom it seems winning WAS more important than taking part.
There is a serious disconnect in your logic. If taking part was more important than winning to those guys, then they obviously wouldn’t even care that it was 12-0 in the first place and there would be no need to change the rules. A lazy desire to win and then changing the rules so you are competitive, though, is quite frankly chickenshit. And the rebalancing of a pickup basketball game is not a good analogy. Basketball players will never gain any more basketball skill that day so if competitiveness is desired, you have to rebalance the teams, but anyone in a fantasy league can use the same strategy and balance things out themselves.