For as long as I've played GLB, two different phenomena have particularly vexed some team owners: the so-called "playoff sim" where the same team performs great in the regular season and awfully in the playoffs; and a human team losing to a CPU team that they'd previously defeated by a large margin -- an event that seems to happen with particular viciousness come playoff time.
One theory about the "playoff sim" that quite a few people have put forth is the role of Confidence. Bort himself has stated unequivocally on multiple occasions that there is no such thing as a "playoff sim," but he also stated on multiple occasions that Confidence is FAR more important that most dot-builders believe. Bort never came right out and said this next idea as I recall, but he hinted on a couple of occasions that Confidence helps your dot in high-pressure situations, and playoff games are high-pressure situations, so... you fill in the rest. Plenty of people over the years certainly have, so I'm not exactly treading new ground here.
I've long been fascinated by CPU-over-human upsets and the forum meltdowns that result from them, especially when they happen in the playoffs. In many cases, the team owner points to their 16-0 record and states as immutable fact that their team is "TOO GOOD" to lose to a CPU team, and therefore the game must be bugged. In most cases, it turns out the human team is playing in a terrible league which inflates their record and tricks them into thinking their team is better than it actually is, and the CPU team that knocked them off in the playoffs usually played close games with the human team in the regular season -- close games that the team owner ignored because "we're too good to lose to a CPU team, right?"
What fascinates me even more are the cases that DON'T fit that mold -- cases where a legitimately great team in a real league against legit opponents gets upset by a CPU team in the playoffs. These cases are rare, but they happen just often enough that they can't be ignored. But oftentimes I can still find some explanation, and there was often a warning sign in the form of a closer-than-it-should've-been win in the regular season that should've served as a red flag to the human team. But time after time after time -- it happens in the playoffs.
Is there a connection?
We know Bort says Confidence is more important that most dot-builders think. And we know that CPU dots scale up-and-down based on the average level of the human dots around them. It's safe to assume that the CPU dots have formulas for each Attribute that scale up-and-down as part of that mechanism. Since Bort clearly valued Confidence more than most human dot-builders do, does that mean Confidence is over-emphasized in CPU dots? And if CPU dots have a higher ratio of Confidence compared to their human counterparts -- could this explain why some CPU teams seem to perform so much better in the playoffs? Do we all need to be 4-capping Confidence on all of our dots?
Or am I over-thinking this?
Or did someone else come up with this theory back in Season 57 and I'm late to the party?
One theory about the "playoff sim" that quite a few people have put forth is the role of Confidence. Bort himself has stated unequivocally on multiple occasions that there is no such thing as a "playoff sim," but he also stated on multiple occasions that Confidence is FAR more important that most dot-builders believe. Bort never came right out and said this next idea as I recall, but he hinted on a couple of occasions that Confidence helps your dot in high-pressure situations, and playoff games are high-pressure situations, so... you fill in the rest. Plenty of people over the years certainly have, so I'm not exactly treading new ground here.
I've long been fascinated by CPU-over-human upsets and the forum meltdowns that result from them, especially when they happen in the playoffs. In many cases, the team owner points to their 16-0 record and states as immutable fact that their team is "TOO GOOD" to lose to a CPU team, and therefore the game must be bugged. In most cases, it turns out the human team is playing in a terrible league which inflates their record and tricks them into thinking their team is better than it actually is, and the CPU team that knocked them off in the playoffs usually played close games with the human team in the regular season -- close games that the team owner ignored because "we're too good to lose to a CPU team, right?"
What fascinates me even more are the cases that DON'T fit that mold -- cases where a legitimately great team in a real league against legit opponents gets upset by a CPU team in the playoffs. These cases are rare, but they happen just often enough that they can't be ignored. But oftentimes I can still find some explanation, and there was often a warning sign in the form of a closer-than-it-should've-been win in the regular season that should've served as a red flag to the human team. But time after time after time -- it happens in the playoffs.
Is there a connection?
We know Bort says Confidence is more important that most dot-builders think. And we know that CPU dots scale up-and-down based on the average level of the human dots around them. It's safe to assume that the CPU dots have formulas for each Attribute that scale up-and-down as part of that mechanism. Since Bort clearly valued Confidence more than most human dot-builders do, does that mean Confidence is over-emphasized in CPU dots? And if CPU dots have a higher ratio of Confidence compared to their human counterparts -- could this explain why some CPU teams seem to perform so much better in the playoffs? Do we all need to be 4-capping Confidence on all of our dots?
Or am I over-thinking this?
Or did someone else come up with this theory back in Season 57 and I'm late to the party?
