papalorax said:

Right - what I would want is to have two separate world champions: Joust and melee, and have there be no "overall" champion because it doesn't make sense to me, when the two games (melee vs joust) are so drastically different. I would be totally down with that.

papalorax said:

No, they should just be disbanded......GO BEARS!

My personal opinion is to simply remove the overall champion title. We have two different formats with two different champions; if there was no overall champion title then it is less likely that we would see something like what we saw on Friday.

WolfgangSenff said:

WolfgangSenff said:

WolfgangSenff said:

I'm a Pats fan and I find this highly offensive. This was never proven to be true and no facts have came out stating that they did this.

On to the matter at hand. I was there watching the final melee table and honestly there were many people I talked to after the melee tourney and the next couple days that were very upset about how it went down. I know that "in the rules" it states that alliances are OK whether they are made outside the game or made in the game. And honestly I'm ok with alliances made in game. However sitting down at a table with two people and knowing from the start that you have no chance is not a fun experience. It basically turns into a 2 vs 2 game and if I'm not mistaken didn't they already have a tourney for that last year?

What I am not OK with is this assumption that 2 of the games top players were merely trying to show a flaw in the system and show why Melee is not suitable for a championship tourney. That's BS. There is no flaw in the system. The only flaw is that two people came to gencon to play in a tourney not baesd on the fact that they like the format or think it's valid for a championship but only to make a mockery of the system and try to show it's flaws. The system is not the problem. The two players trying to exploit the system are the problem.

All I have to say is that Melee is Melee...It's not Co-op. If certain players want to play a Co-op game then go play LoTR.

widowmaker93 said:

In re: Pats, I'm actually a Pats fan myself. I'm living in Boston now. That was meant as a joke - my apologies for the offensive attempt at levity.

There was more than one person in the melee just trying to give games to other people - using Clansmen (for example) to boost opponent's characters, and that's *all* they were doing. My point is that it seems kind of silly to include these games in the count for overall champion - if there should even *be* an overall champion.

Intentionally Anonymous said:

The way that game played out had nothing to do with the overall title and everything to do about winning the melee title. Removing the overall title is a terrible solution in the end the players just lose something and gain nothing. The big prizes (box and sword) went to melee and joust. Corey got an trophy slightly larger then a regional trophy.

i agree, there should not be an overall champion. it's just pointless.

widowmaker93 said:

But then how will they get lots of people to play melee?!?

First off, collusion obviously has an ethical component to it in a competitive game. Two people who collude don't necessarily/always cross an ethical line, but it's definitely a fair question and one that reasonable people can disagree on. So I don't think it's fair to flame critics just because they think Erick and Corey acted improperly, but those critics should also consider context. Anytime two sides work together (OR OPT NOT TO) to win in a zero-sum situation that harms other people will likely raise ethical questions (war, business, family matters, etc.). In short, it's fine to raise ethics, BUT if you are going to make such a claim on these forums, it's inappropriate to do it without providing some sort of justification for your argument.

An aspect of this question though that I think hasn't been addressed is an assumption many people are making...collusion somehow began when Erick and Corey arrived at the finals table. That's an extremely naive assumption. Consider the facts: (1) both played the same deck; (2) they obviously practiced A LOT with each other; (3) they brought a team of 5-8 players from the DC and Wisconsin metas, many of which who made it to top 16 (I think DC/Wisconsin players comprised roughly 1/3 of the top 16). In short, Erick and Corey colluded in every way possible (and legal) to ensure the success of the 2 metas. That may be controversial, but it's also pretty impressive.

In fact, I think Corey and Erick's approach is extremely innovative. They did not just focus on the deck build, which many melee players say matters less, or even the in-game politics, which often feels arbitrary at best (and typically has more to do with your own personality than something you can actually control). Instead, these two friends saw melee for what it was...a team game that requires leadership and a coordinated, strategic approach to win. For this reason, what's most impressive to me is not that the two of them made it to the finals table, but that the team as a whole worked so well together in preparation before and during the event that they essentially dominated the melee at every stage of the competition.

So in my view, to attack Erick or Corey for their performance at the finals table is extremely narrow-sighted and overly focused on this one round. In contrast, I would say these two showed exceptional leadership.

Rings (I think...hope I'm not putting words in your mouth) and others here have argued for awhile now that melee has just as much to do with friends or how many (competitive) teammates you have, than it does with a player's own personal skill level. Put another way, any "problem" with collusion has less to do with the players and more to do with the inherent structural qualities of the format. The the debate should be focused on that question..."Why is melee structured in a way that rewards a team approach? Is this a good thing?"

Maybe the answer is not to try to avoid collusion, but to bring it more formally into the format? For example, maybe melee should be a team award that is scored based on the average success of 3-5 person teams? Or maybe there's no real need for a change in structure, only a change in public perception of what melee champion means.

On the "overall champion" title, I think that's a pretty arbitrary award that has just as much to do with the process of scoring than it does with skill level. But if FFG wants to randomly assign a world champion just to allow one more player to design a "champion card," why is that a bad thing? I think Corey will design a fantastic card, and now he can create a second that compliments the first.

fhornmikey said:

fhornmikey said:

I don't think it would detract that much. Considering: A) More played Melee than joust this year Do we assume that the numbers difference was because people did poorly in the melee and decided not to play joust because they couldn't win over all? B) How many folks in an honest assessment of their chances thought they would/could win overall? So why would they not play if they enjoy melee? I know I didn't have a chance (I suck hard at Melee) C)Life/GenCon is too short to spend in a 6 hour+ tourney just because you want a shot at the "overall" title, play because it's fun. That being said I'm sort of in a different boat, I think there should be more involved in the overall champion. Not saying how exactly it would be done, but maybe add a 2v2 tourney, or the pick-up league. (where was that this year!?) Or make overall champ someone who has shown affinity with multiple houses rather than just the "top" house(s).

Oh and CHOO CHOO thread derailed. Sorry

Text is so bad for sarcasm lol...

fhornmikey said:

True statement....then, bravo ser! I appreciate the sentiment that you took one sentence to convey and I took many paragraphs....must be the lawyer in me. Or I'm still bitter about my Maester Robert loss in joust..........

goshdarnstud said:

The lesson I got from this was that melee is pretty random, and success is at best only a partial testament to player skill. There's really no way to make a person care about the game, especially if they aren't intending to be competitive, and even more so if they for some reason decide to take a particular action against them as a personal slight. If you're unlucky to sit at a table where one of the many such players were seated, the games became pretty silly.

A format that formalized the "team" aspect of melee could help to avoid this. Even if I perform poorly in my first two games, it's still important for me to try to do well in my remaining games so that I can boost the overall team score/average.

Twn2dn said:

It's pretty hard to discount the fact that Saturday is the day at GenCon where most games run their big thing.

Twn2dn said:

Really? I've been playing it wrong then. When I play melee we all play to win. If there are deals being made at the table then they're dynamic and potentially short-lived with alliances forming and collapsing as play dictates. I'm not getting the feeling that that was what was happening in this particular game...

What would be really interesting is to hear from the other players at the final table. Do they think they were denied a fair chance at the win? If not then everything is probably cool. It would also be nice to hear whether FFG themselves consider the melee format to a be team game. If they do, then enter as teams and warn solo players that they're really there to make up the numbers.

Quick edit: Dear webmaster,

When the software warns you that there have been posts since you started writing your post and to see them in case they are relevant, it automatically doubles the quoted text. Please disable this "feature". Thanks.

papalorax said:

+1. Someone else pointed this out too, and I think it's more likely the reason.

widowmaker93 said:

I think is laughble that ppl take jokes about their respective sports teams like an insult to their mother. Im speaking as a Canadian who understands that my fellow countrymen riot even when their team wins. Mind you, there is no understanding that.

This thread is decending into a level of retardation that is only matched by the thread on westeros.org that had people outraged when a dragon was whipped in Dance.

fhornmikey said:

+1

Take away the overall title - and you're likely to go back to the (historically) much lower attendacne for melee.

First off, Congratulations to Corey on his win and to the rest of the final table (and top 16 for that matter) for their high-end play.

I'll preface the remainder of my comments by saying that I don't think anyone can reasonably question the skill level, both in deckbuilding and playing, of Corey and Erick. I've played against Erick a couple times and I've observed his play a fair amount, and I never cease to be impressed. I've only observed Corey, but he seems to be on a similar level. I have no doubts that, kingmaking or not, both of them have the requisite skill to make it to a final table. I've never formally met Corey, but I've talked to Erick a number of times and found him to be very pleasant. And Twn2Dn is right, both of them should be applauded for working the system perfectly.

As far as collusion/kingmaking/whatever you want to call it, it's clearly kosher by the rules of the game and by no means should Corey's win be asterisked or his card/s banned or anything like that.

All that said, I find myself agreeing with Nick-ler. This kind of thing does leave a bad taste in my mouth. I can't hold with those that say it it's ok because it accurately reflects the books. As Msommi mentioned previously in this thread, this is the real world; having Nedly cards and game mechanics that reflect the books is one thing, but this is another.

As an example, I'll mention what happened at my third table at the Melee. My table consisted of a myself, one rather inexperienced player, one moderately experienced player (from what i could tell) and a one very experienced and very talented player. I'll call us A, B, C, and D.

As house cards and agendas are being put down, C turns to D and says "I think we should team up." As the game proceeds, C and D both play very well, and A and myself are really never in the game. Every time either of us starts getting any kind of decent board position, we're put down again pretty easily. Meanwhile, A and myself take our challenges against whoever we can, including each other, but we finish in a distant fourth and third respectively. If i had a NPE at GenCon, this was it.

I'll admit that I'm no top end player by any means, but I'm pretty good-natured and tend to have fun even when I lose (like in my first melee matchup, where it was clearly every man for himself) However, playing what amounted to a 2 vs. 1 vs. 1 game was really no fun. Is it cheating? No, not at all, but I felt cheated out of any legitimate chance to win and it definitely felt a little dirty. Even the second table I played at, where the alliance for the win only happened on the last turn/phase (one player told another they could be first and second if they worked together) it still felt a bit off. The first table, where every one was clearly in it for himself only, was the most fun, and it had nothing to do with the personalities of the players.

I can't help but think of the analogy of sports, whenever players on opposing teams are said to have been "rolling over" for one another, like Brett Favre and Michael Strahan and the single-season sack record. Someone always seems to say something like "I show my respect for players on the opposing team by playing my best."

Maybe I'm being too idealistic, but I feel you should play to win every time.

Maybe it's because I'm from a 2-person meta, but I feel that being able to do better because you have more friends in the tournament is unfair, whether it's within the rules or not.

Where should the line be drawn? Should a line be drawn? Would I do the same thing in the same position? How should this affect the World Champion issue? I don't know; I just know it doesn't feel quite right.

Twn2dn said:

I think this gets to the heart of the matter. Corey and Erick apparently approached the melee tournament with a team mindset. There's nothing wrong with that, especially if they're there with an actual team, but it begs the question of whether Melee is better advertised as a team format game, for tourney purposes, and not simply an every-man-for-himself joust format with 4 players instead of 2. I noticed there wasn't much commentary on how those two guys made it to the final table-- were they paired up through the tournament, or did they make it through the rounds on their own? If the criticism of the collusion of the two guys at the final table is based on the fact that it eliminates skill from determining the outcome, didn't the guys have to have skill to make it through the melee tournament to the final table? At any point, underdogs in the earlier rounds could have teamed up to take out a favored player, it seems. If the format were so terrible at rewarding skill, there could have just been a hodgepodge of first-timers and the lucky sitting at the final table.

Anyway, the outcome doesn't bother me. As other posters have stated, alliances are part of the rules, and part of the whole theme of the Game of Thrones world. The only real problem here is that Corey and Erick had no incentive to turn against each other-- their alliance had no chance of treachery, which definitely goes against the theme of the GoT world. The perfect Melee environment is one where any alliance is just as capable of deceit as any other.

Shenanigans said:

It doesn't feel right because it's not "competitive joust," as ktom put it, which is pretty much the "type" of competitiveness that everyone expects/wants from a competitive game, but that's not the type of competition demanded in Melee. It's why I don't discredit player's performance in Melee, or why I don't think what happened this year is anywhere close to cheating, dishonorable, etc.; king-making, having friends, etc. (in addition to being skilled, having a good deck, etc.) IS what the game in a tournament setting is about, whether people want to admit/realize it or not (and I think many, I'd even wager most, dont despite ktom suggesting otherwise).

However, the great majority of players DO NOT want this kind of game, which is why I think it is a flaw in the Melee tournament format. Most players do not like "competitive melee." They enjoy "competitive joust" (even those who play Melee) and you'll find this type of competition in friendly one-game melee matches, but in a tournament format the competition type changes into what i think the great majority of people would agree is much less enjoyable.

I can tell you I played with Corey at my opening Melee table and he played very well, but gamed me something fierce. He leapt out to a very early lead with a duped Red Viper and very few characters in play, I believe he had 7 power at the end of turn 1. By turn 3 we had managed to wipe his board and myself and Darknoj were beginning to get somewhere power wise. At this point I played Rhaenys's his during martialling and Corey let the table known I was a major threat because of what was in his own dead pile. Although I had known Corey was the ideal target for the hill I hadn't really done all the exact math, however his warning to the table prompted me to go for it, and promptly get destroyed the rest of the table. Would I have gone for it that turn if he hadn't said something? Probably not, but he gamed me and the table hard, and that's exactly how melee is meant to be played. Wound up sealing himself 2nd at the table and cast me down to 4th. It was very obvious to me from the manner in which he table talked/played that he knew exactly what he was doing in a melee environment, and there certainly was no Erick there to help him at our table.

FATMOUSE said:

I'm not sure what I am supposed to have suggested here....

My original comment was simply that "competition" comes in many different flavors, and that Melee and Joust are not the same flavor. No matter how good the vanilla is, it's pretty bad if you are expecting chocolate. I wasn't trying to suggest anything about the predominant expectations in the community one way or another, just that a Melee tournament should be judged for what it is rather than for what you might want a Joust tournament to be like.

ktom said:

Wait, now you are suggesting that Melee is a vanilla game?!? Is there no end to your pot-stirring!! Have some decency for other people's feelings and beliefs!!!!!!!!

goshdarnstud said:

+1