On Tue, 22 Jun 2010, Alexander Smith wrote:
The idea is that initially there should be two teams; players are
allocated to teams at random, and likewise new players are put on a
random team. Once a team's accumulated 300 points (provisional value;
how fast can ergs be scored, I wonder?), the team is replaced with two
new teams, and its members assigned to those teams at random. Therefore,
the reward for doing well is to end up in a smaller team, and if a
player ends up on a team by emself, that player wins (and the entire
team dynamic is reset back to two random teams again). A player can be
moved from one team to another without two objections from the team
they're leaving and without two objections from the team they're
entering; this lets teams expel underperforming members (as there'd only
be one objection, if that), players move themselves to a different team
(assuming not too many objections from elsewhere), and even let teams
kidnap desirable players if they could prevent the other team from
mustering the objections needed. Two objections is chosen as it has an
interesting relationship with the team size.
This is rather clever. The problem with teams last times (with 4 teams,
randomly assigned) is that in each team there tended to be 1-2 people
who cared enough to try to earn points, so it really was a contest
between team leaders rather than teams. So I've been leery of teams
since then. Making team makeup a part of the game itself is a nice new
twist to avoid that. Maybe the metaphor can be the Federation of
International Federated Associations with leagues, trades, captains, etc.
