Let's just try whatever sounds most complicated.  Anyway, if you don't want to set any hard rules, we will, of course, have to discuss what system to split up teams will be used before every game and then get to picking teams.  I'll state again that my personal preference is whatever gets us up and running the quickest.  I assume that in the world of give and take, we'll eventually come around to just quickly splitting a game per my request, right?  And then seeing if the worlds most imbalanced game has occurred as a result.  I think that if you'd be kind to really consider 1,3,5,8, it would quickly make sense that if we had the same 10 people for 2 games (and we re pick after each game), it would be even if you and I agreed about the strength of players.  I'd also think that it would result in more frequently balanced games, but that's up for debate, ofc. 

Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but you are aware that we'd swap champ selection roles each game?  Game 1 you are 1,3,5,8, game 2 I am 1,3,5,8.  Anyway, I think this is being over thought due to some sense of disparity that I can't quite fathom.  If you feel like you'd need some sort of handicap, I'm at a loss, so I'm guessing you didn't understand me?

Anyway, in the hopes of not having this discussion go on much further, perhaps we can just agree to try a system I propose and one you do as well.  Sounds fair, right?  Whatever works best would be utilized going forward. 

re: putting whatever system into practice - the next time we get together, I'll quickly put all the names into excel.  You could hop onto my twitch stream if you like so we'd both have the same visual when sorting teams. 

"Perhaps I've misunderstood you, but you are aware that we'd swap champ selection roles each game?  Game 1 you are 1,3,5,8, game 2 I am 1,3,5,8."

If Wallstop or Rawr or some other platinum or pro is playing both games without any player of equivilent skill level to balance him out, then Game 1 my team wins and Game 2 your team wins.  If Sins is playing and everyone else is around the same skill level, then Game 1 your team wins and in Game 2 my team wins.

That's assuming the ringer sticks around for the second game.  Oh what fun it will be to get completely annihilated by a platinum player, then have him bail when it's your turn to have first pick.

 

"If you feel like you'd need some sort of handicap, I'm at a loss, so I'm guessing you didn't understand me?"

When you felt team's weren't even the other day, I offered to switch entire teams with you... so no, obviously I don't feel that I need any sort of handicap.

"Let's just try whatever sounds most complicated."

There is a super good player who happens to be in the in house with us.  He may not be there next game, so we can't just take turns having him on our side for an auto-win, as much fun as that would be.  So I decide that having that player as someones first pick, is worth lets say the next three picks for the other team.  Then you make a choice "Do I want the best player?  Or do I want the next three best players?"  Not rocket science.

Sorry, but your way will only work some of the time:  When either the skill level is pretty even across the board or the teams balanced out by having the worst player in the game playing with the best.

Your way will be fair, only if we have the same players from the game before when we switch pick orders. Even then, fair doesn't equal fun.  I don't think anyone really wants to trade stomp sessions?

you're killing me here... so, coming up with a system is very difficult because of a myriad of hypothetical situations.  And you are so invested in the science of team selection that we can't simply try things out apparently?  The only conclusion we will have to this discussion now is that we'll discuss things on the fly then whenever we get our next in house game and we'll go from there.  Naming a few scenarios in which a system might not be optimal and then concluding that the result would be "stomp sessions" seems a bit biased without any data to back it up... data which could be obtained by trying a system out 1 night... unless playing 1 or 2 games using a different system would ruin the idea of in house games for all time.  Stop being obtuse. 

this is sort of a quality v quantity argument:

1- we can quickly play 2, 3, 4 games that might be severely unbalanced 2/3rds the time 

2- we can take 10-15 minutes each time to plan teams, only play 1-2 games, with unbalance still occuring 25% of the time

With an in-house imbalanced game, it is somewhat of a zero-sum game. The winning team might feel guilty at worst, happy at best. The losing team will feel frustrated, blame Thunder, do quick surrenders/etc. How do you think the botlane felt against Wallstop's pro support?

An in-house balanced game is really fun - and to be fair, one of the biggest reasons to play in-house. (the other being running "actual" team-comps against "actual" team-comps, along with strategic banning).

My argument is that an inbalanced game is nearly worthless, or might actually have a "negative" value.

Every imbalanced game is going to lead to more and more people just playing Normals. What to know what's even quicker and easier than 1, 3, 5, 8? 

Having 5 people get together in a Normal game and play against randoms. We wait 2 minutes, maybe a dodge, there is less pressure, less "oh god they have  Wallstop".

My Wallstop/Rawr example is not at all hypothetical.  A player of their caliber will join us occasionally, and when there isn't someone good or bad enough to balance them out, the game is decided in champ select.  The impact of these certain players seems obvious to most people I talk to, but I realize you don't press Tab in game so perhaps you don't notice when Rawr is at 16/4 KD ratio?

Even when a plat isn't playing, there have been many games I've gone into thinking "Oh boy, this is gonna be really rough..." but have been a good sport.  I haven't really complained, just laughed along with my friends spectating who missed the fun when they're telling me "Who decided these teams?! LOL!!!"

But I'm growing a little weary of it, and so are some other regulars.  So forgive me if I'm enthusiastic about using a not too complicated method of having fair games (or at least the chance for them relying on our ability to pick) every time.  

IMO your method is like a coin flip.  Sometimes we'll have the right people playing and we'll have a super fun/fair game.  Sometimes we'll have a mix of people of such varying skill levels that the game will be decided on first or last pick.

I might be wrong, but I don't think I'm the one being obtuse.

Well, all I'm looking for is gains in the quality of balancing - preferably quick gains.  I'm more interested in a progression of towards a better system.  We started just getting together and more or less playing on a given team after we join.  Not really any real balancing.  Obviously not a good system.  So we improved it by having thunder and I talk about teams.  That produced some improvement, but not a heck of a lot, imo, due to thunder and I disagreeing about balance and my impatience at trying to get games up and running quickly.  I think we played like 1-3 games last night (not sure).  I think 1 of those games I requested a trade that thunder didn't think would be fair and one where I just said fuck it when the same scenario occurred.  Still, its better than the original system.  The next progression in my mind is to add more variety by going to some form of draft.  That, imo, is the next logical step and has potential to be good.  The obtuse comment, thunder, has everything to do with you at the very least sounding unwilling to try my simple request and see how it goes. If that sounds unreasonable, then.. well... you are unreasonable.  My entire logic behind this is to force us to make intelligent choices based on the available players. But started from a draft pov and not a "I've already got the best 2 players and am unwilling to trade."  A simple 1 and 2 pick ensures that the 2 best perceived players won't be on the same team... or at least should do that. 

Anyway, the one process improvement we will have is that whole thing I mentioned about excel.  That should at least help thunder and I eye things up.

The nature of these games makes proving anything when we "try my simple request and see how it goes" problematic.  Did one team give up first blood in an invade?  Did Cow decide to not be a top tier mid and go jungle Heimer instead?  Did one team allow their weakest player to go top instead of playing the only role they could have been competitive in?  Did someone decide they wanted to see if Support Elise was still a thing after her nerfs?  If a game like this occurs, how have we learned anything from our attempts to balance teams when one team trolled around?

You might find my proposed method needlessly complicated, but you can't argue it's fairness.  You get to choose which pick order you want.

If you think it would take too much time, then let me clarify.  I would choose to go with Hedgie's pick order almost every time for simplicity, and only when I saw some large potential for imbalance would I need 1 minute to shift things around.  Then you get 1 minute to choose which of pick orders you want.

2 minutes isn't too much time to spend for everyone to feel like the game at least has a hope of being fairly balanced.  If you don't feel the same way, we have two very different perspectives on this.

just pulling this forward so its clear what we are talking about

Thunder's plan

humor me and explain this in more detail... from start to finish.  Including scenario for magic amazing player and crap player. 

it's like cutting cake: one person gets to slice, one person gets to pick.

The slicer wants to slice as much-in-half so that they don't get the smaller piece. The chooser will (presumably) always choose the larger one.

One person is the slicer - chooses which order picks will go.

This could be:

   1, 2, 3, 4 / 5, 6, 7, 8 (obviously silly)

   1, 3, 5, 7 / 2, 4, 6, 8 (better, but still silly)

   1, 4, 5, 8 / 2, 3, 6, 7 (better for team 1 if there is 1 really strong player, better for team 2 if there is 1 really weak player - mostly balanced otherwise)

   1,  5, 6, 8 / 2, 3, 4, 7 (an example if there is a team with a really strong and a really weak player. Team 2 gets a large group of "low gold" players, Team 1 gets a plat, a bronze, and some mix in the middle).

Then the other person chooses which pick order - and then you whoever picked first-pick starts picking.

Okay!

Players in lobby: Pacov, Dynamo (Me!), Gotnades, Hedgie, Karl, Hunny, Khan, Sharp (Has new name that starts with K, don't de-friend her!), Gerdum, Knurstie.

All these players I consider very solid even if they have varying skill levels and role diversity, so I just say "Normal Pick Order" which is 1 - 2,3 - 4,5 - 6,7 - 8.  You then decide if you'd prefer to pick 1st, 4th, 5th, and 8th... or if you'd rather pick 2nd, 3rd, 6th, 7th.

We pick, we play.  Maybe a stomp, maybe a close game... who knows?  But we did our best to make it fair.

Next game, Knurstie leaves to do British things, and a wild Wallstop appears. So I take a minute to decide the draft order for Team A and Team B.  1 - 2,3 - 4 - 5,6 - 7,8.  So you now decide if you want 1st (Wallstop), 4th, 7th, 8th picks, or 2nd, 3rd, 5th, 6th.

Wallstop leaves after one game, and we have SaintlySins replace him.  I choose the draft order to be 1,2 - 3,4 - 5 - 6,7 - 8.  So you get to choose if you want 1,2,5,8 or 3,4,6,7.

how do we decide who would get the choice?  A per game rotation?

Also, you are making it sound like you are deciding the pick order.  Potential for unfair adv if you create the pick order and then also have your choice of which set you want.  So, would we need a 3rd party or would it always be that if you make the set, the other captain gets their choice of what pick order to use... that make sense?  If that's the case, then I think we should alternate.  If I declare a specific pick order (eg 1-2,3-4 etc), then the other capt gets to decide which set of picks they want.  That would probably be the most fair way to handle it, right?

 thunder was alternating between "people in general" third-person "you" and "second-person" you in that sentence, which is where your confusion is.

We need an "om"/"de" in Engish. (i personally use en but that is just me )

there's one slicer and one picker

fyi

http://na.leagueoflegends.com/board/showthread.php?t=3088241

ah ok.  We shall try this thingus. 

I will just pop in to say that I agree something needs to be decided about in regards to in house games. I will use the last on I was part of as an example.

First- I am pretty sure everyone knew who would win before we even got into champion select. Pitting Trouser vs. Karl and Cow(<--Plat player) wasn't fair in any sense of the word.

Second- Unorthodox roles. The enemy team had for the most part, roles that they play well (Cow may have been out of place, but he is Plat so he will play fine wherever). While we had me top (lol), Axon mid (this was perfectly fine), Pacov and Krdax bot (who quickly made it apparent he had no idea what a support was ), and Trouser jungle.

I will start with Top! I can say I lost it at champ select simply because I had to pick someone who would not instantly die to Warwick ganks. This made me incredibly easy to counterpick to the point where the lane was a lost cause from the get go.

Mid lane we had an advantage with Axon being on the ball, but TF applies pressure on lanes just from being MIA so it mattered little.

Bot lane was lost from the get go. Krdax who doesn't support vs. Thunder who is a great support. That alone would lose it, but next we smack Cow down there vs. Pacov. So the Plat player on AD carry gets free farm for the entire game(he had 50% pacovs CS and far more kills). Whoopie!

Jungle was also lost from the get go. Trouser tried his best and I cannot fault him for that(he did better than most of us), but Karl is THE jungler in our little group. There was 0 chance of our team getting a safe dragon or baron unless we annihilated the enemy team in a teamfight(fat chance of that with almost every lane lost).

I can safely say that the outcome of the game was fairly obvious and incredibly painful to play through (Pacov and Krdax refused to surrender when we stood 0 chance of coming back).

All in all this and the previous in house experience since I have came back have made me consider not even joining them. I doubt I have seen a fair one (that involved myself) this year and it is a little offsetting when you do not have fun playing with a group of friends.

19/3/6 as cait for my 2nd ranked in my league... which we essentially did 4v5 (enemy team favor).  I have 56 points and am currently ranked #3 in bronze tier 1.  Hoping my success continues and I shoot up to silver.