I am being completely honest when i say i am down right confused as to the whole fastest game/tie break situation. We seem to be making more rules and exceptions where's we should be streamlining the system as much as possible.
There are certainly more rules required to break ties than are required in treating ties equally. It's not me that's adding the rules.
So what you are saying Mumble, is that there is no limit to fastest game bonus points. It is possible, however unlikely. that everyone could get a bonus point for fastest game???
Sure why not? If suddenly everyone submitted a 4 year game then that would certainly indicate that a whole bunch of people have suddenly improved their game. I think that is both the goal of the league as well as something that deserves the slight recognition that a single bonus point conveys. However, for this to happen everyone would have to improve to precisely 4 years because if only three people posted a 3 year game then four years gets nothing.
In any case we did have this discussion and I thought we had agreement to at least try it. You can't condem a system without at least giving it a chance. If everyone hates it and thinks it's stupid then we can go back to the 1,2,3 method or top 6 or whatever. But all of these have more rules and exceptions than treating ties equally.
There still should be some reward for submitting early, IMHO, and "paying down to sixth" leaves plenty of opportunity for those with not as much time as others.
This is actually a totally separate category. Yes I agree that submitting earlier is a disadvantage that perhaps deserves some kind of bonus, but why should submitting earlier be part of the fast game criteria and have nothing to do with the high score criteria?
Basically it's more unlikely that there will be ties in the score but they certainly can and will happen. We need to have a policy of what we do in case of tied scores before it happens not after. Again my opinion is that all ties are treated equally. Period. End of story. No ifs ands or buts. Everything else proposed adds an extra and unnecessary layer of rules. Why bother? Give both of them a point and move on. What could be easier?
As far as Game submittal. If folks feel that submitting early to the game thread is a disadvantage then perhaps we should offer a single bonus point to the first three that post their game to the League Submission thread. This would encourage people to submit their game and not wait to see if they can better it later. However it only helps the first three because once three have posted their game no one else as any incentive to post.
Anyway, folks are postulating conditions and putting what ifs on things that will never happen. There won't be 10 ties as Vilgan suggested nor will there even be 6 as Neilo suggested. And even if there are so what? How is this the end of the world if everybody happens to have a good quick game. If ten people get a 4 year game and that's defined to be somehow good and worthy of bonus it's pretty arbitrary to cut that off at 6 and say to the other 4 that their 4 year game is not as good as someone else's four year game. Particularily if you need an extra layer of rule and exception to enforce this arbitrary cut off. Seems senseless to me.