Putting out an open challenge

[Logan]

So I hear there are some players who are interested in doing a tournament. So here's the deal...

If you really want a tournament then the following requirements must be met:

8 Completed Battle threads by any 12 total players.
8 Completed Quest threads by any 14 total players.

8 Completed Battle or Quest threads with scores > 70.
4 Completed Battle or Quest threads with scores > 75.
2 Completed Battle or Quest threads with scores > 80.


If these conditions are met (starting with this point forward), and the threads are linked and documented here...

I will GUARANTEE a tournament registration the week following the completion of all threads.


The gauntlet has been laid down. Prove your worth! :D


NOTE: All threads completed meeting above criteria must be linked to in this thread! I will keep track of them in this first post via edits.

Completed List:

http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=20281 - Silence Sei v Revenant. Completed Battle. 2 Players.

[Silence Sei]

I for one am all for this idea. It proves to the mods we're being active and as a reward we get a tourney. How awresome is that?!

[Logan]

Note: This challenge is out there for everyone to participate, and as such, everyone is encouraged to do so.

I will be, for sure!

[Taskmienster]

Challenge accepted. :p

I'm stoked. I'm being active, finally, and I love tournaments. Lets do this.

[Duffy]

Duffy will make a return here, I think I've progressed enough to make it to round 2 for once :p

[Logan]

Um...the tournament won't happen until those conditions are met. So if you REALLY want to participate in the tournament, I suggest you get your arse in gear and post.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Tournaments have failed even during periods of significant activity. Are there seriously people who want one or is this just a particularly strange and desperate activity ploy? The fact of the matter is that the requirements here are neither necessary nor sufficient for a successful tournament.

I would bet that the requirements will simply not be met, but I think the more amusing and likely outcome is that they trickle in slowly and someone demands fulfillment of this promise much later than anticipated. Apropos given how tournaments have dragged on ad nauseum. For all your specificity on score and number of participants you might want to say that the first of these needs to be finished within X weeks/months of the last. Any given year of Althanas history probably fulfills these criteria, so you might want to rein that in.

If they truly exist, I direct any member who is seriously interested in a tournament here (http://www.althanas.com/world/forumdisplay.php?f=258). Look upon its post dates, ye members, and despair.

[Mouse]

Being pessimistic isn't going to help anything. I like this idea, and even if it doesn't pan out, it helps give us all a little bit of a push to stay active. It's easy to procrastinate when there are no hard goals to aspire to. :) Besides, Vis, no one is making you participate, in the effort to be active or the tournament itself. Let the people who are interested to make a go of it. It won't hurt you any if it doesn't pan out.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Actually, being realistic does help prevent stupid mistakes like not putting a timeframe on things or setting unrelated standards

I'm tired of hearing that saying "X is a bad idea" isn't productive. Consider your life and the lives of those around you and whether being dissuaded from some things might have been helpful. Some people spurt suggestions. I caution against imprudence. Both are helpful (e.g. Active suggestion - "Get a real job" Cautionary warning - "Don't have out of wedlock children as a minor with a minor")

[Max Dirks]

Nah, you're just a pessimist.

[Visla Eraclaire]

Nah, you're just a pessimist.

And you're always a ray of sunshine and optimism, Max :) Chatlogs might disagree with me, though

[Atzar]

Althanas is more than capable of running a successful tournament - I've seen it before. In general, it takes a dedicated staff who stick with it from beginning to end. The problems generally arise when judges wander away, or when there's a turnover in the staff in the midst of the tournament.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I'm sure it is capable in some theoretical sense. My point is not "TOURNAMENTS BAD RAAAAR", but that the standards being advanced in this thread to "qualify" for a tournament have little to do with whether the tournament will succeed or not. Rather than making a blanket promise based on largely uncorrelated data, those who want a tournament might want to take a serious look at the failures of previous tournaments, what about their structure can be improved, and how many genuinely interested active people they have.

You can have a million threads linked in here and still not have a tournament. I mean, nothing in the post here even specifies that the threads completed have to be by people who want one. That, along with the lack of a time window, make this a completely useless metric for board activity toward a tournament.

[Slavegirl]

I was thinking about the time window when this was originally posted, so I definitely agree that it is a necessary detail that was probably unintentionally left out. Might be something worth defining.

As far as whether or not a tournament would work or is wanted, there was a question in another thread about when the next one would be, and why not sooner.

Personally, I never participate in tournaments or features, so I have no dog in this fight except as a member of the staff who wants to make sure the site runs as efficiently as possible and is both enjoyable and easy to use for all involved. I think the relevance of this challenge was simply that the lack of activity is why we've chosen to suspend any features until activity grows, and that if the members feel they want a tournament they'll have to show us an increase in activity for us to begin any sort of feature dependent on activity. Granted, the staff needs to be active and committed as well for it to be successful or it won't matter how much the rest of the members want it to work or how active they are.

Yeah. That's my opinion. For what it's worth.

[Saxon]

Looking back on past failures and learning from them is essential for progress. If folks want tournaments with active people from start to finish, as Visla said, there needs to be serious consideration as to what needs to change for that to happen. After you have that figured out, you can start to take the steps necessary to carrying that out. Using the carrot and stick method to get people to do this isn't really going to work out as well as you would hope, I'm afraid. People respond strongly to incentives, and I think thus far the incentives have been far too mild to solicit a strong, consistent response from the player base as of the last couple tournaments to suggest that people would stick it out this time from start to finish. And something in the current model of tournaments definitely isn't working, so it needs to be looked at.

It isn't all bad though, you guys had the right idea by waiting until the summer for high activity to do this. It's a step in the right direction.

.. Fuck. You know its getting weird when I start trying to give meaningful advice and words of encouragement in public.

[Taskmienster]

As Saxon said at the end there, we were waiting till summer for activity. I'd assume that if it's not met by Summer we'd be running it then anyway, since that was the plan. Figure that's the time period by which this would have to be completed in order to allow for a tournament sooner than the summer.

[Atzar]

Looking back on past failures and learning from them is essential for progress. If folks want tournaments with active people from start to finish, as Visla said, there needs to be serious consideration as to what needs to change for that to happen. After you have that figured out, you can start to take the steps necessary to carrying that out. Using the carrot and stick method to get people to do this isn't really going to work out as well as you would hope, I'm afraid. People respond strongly to incentives, and I think thus far the incentives have been far too mild to solicit a strong, consistent response from the player base as of the last couple tournaments to suggest that people would stick it out this time from start to finish. And something in the current model of tournaments definitely isn't working, so it needs to be looked at.

It isn't all bad though, you guys had the right idea by waiting until the summer for high activity to do this. It's a step in the right direction.

.. Fuck. You know its getting weird when I start trying to give meaningful advice and words of encouragement in public.

And what do you think would be a stronger incentive for participation from start to finish? EXP and GP benefits have, for the most part, proven insufficient. IC benefits maybe? The last Gisela - I think it was the last one, anyway, I've been away for awhile - offered a Powergroup HQ as the grand prize if I recall correctly, and it was also a success.

I suggest we look at why that tournament worked.

One reason was that Dirks took care of the entire thing largely by himself, from start to finish - I helped judge a round or two, but when I faltered Dirks took my share and cranked it out with little or no delay. But I think we all agree that a tournament has to be administrated well to work, and to harp on that point any more would be to beat a dead horse.

Another reason - one in line with your point - is the incentive for participation. For the sake of my own amusement, I'm going to force a metaphor here, and liken prospective participants to racing hounds. Some may need no real incentive - the fun of the competition is reason enough. Others, though, need to chase a rabbit to give a shit about the race. Do you really think that the HQ was that enticing of a rabbit? I'm sure there are several members who would covet such a prize. In general, though, powergroups aren't important enough to the public to be that alluring to most people. So honestly, I don't think it's the grand prize that draws people in... and keeps them in.

The thing that Gisela really had going for it, in my opinion, was uniqueness - a change of pace. Most tournaments are just vanilla battles in whatever arena, and they run more or less the same - I see you, I hate you, I attack you, miss, you hit me, ow, I hit you back, HA!, you attack me and miss, I kill you - or whatever. It's why I'm not a fan of battles - they're typically all the same. Gisela was different - you got to command an entire army, and you got to build it from the ground up. You usually don't get to do that on Althanas. It was something new, and it remained fresh enough to maintain the interest level through to the finish.

Now, that was a long-winded way of making a simple point: I don't think vanilla battles are enough. The short-term reward for kicking ass in a battle you otherwise wouldn't be fighting is to take part in another battle you otherwise wouldn't be fighting. Win that one, and guess what happens next? By that point, you lose the interest of many players. Keep in mind that the battle rubric could easily be used to grade any thread in a competitive manner. So, with all of this said, I think an effort should be made to create a premise that is attractive to a wide audience, because it seems to me that the tournaments that deviate from plain one-on-one fights are the most successful.

[Taskmienster]

The thing that Gisela really had going for it, in my opinion, was uniqueness - a change of pace. Most tournaments are just vanilla battles in whatever arena, and they run more or less the same - I see you, I hate you, I attack you, miss, you hit me, ow, I hit you back, HA!, you attack me and miss, I kill you - or whatever. It's why I'm not a fan of battles - they're typically all the same. Gisela was different - you got to command an entire army, and you got to build it from the ground up. You usually don't get to do that on Althanas. It was something new, and it remained fresh enough to maintain the interest level through to the finish.

Now, that was a long-winded way of making a simple point: I don't think vanilla battles are enough. The short-term reward for kicking ass in a battle you otherwise wouldn't be fighting is to take part in another battle you otherwise wouldn't be fighting. Win that one, and guess what happens next? By that point, you lose the interest of many players. Keep in mind that the battle rubric could easily be used to grade any thread in a competitive manner. So, with all of this said, I think an effort should be made to create a premise that is attractive to a wide audience, because it seems to me that the tournaments that deviate from plain one-on-one fights are the most successful.

I was wondering, and I'm going to throw it out here to see what you think, but what if there was an actual story behind the tournament? Would that make a difference? I think what makes me like tournaments, other than the gisela*, is that I can create a story for the battle and have more fun with it that way. I think that helped the ToW as well, because it had a story behind it.

So, if regional activity was added into the reason behind the tournament, would it be more enticing? Or would it still not hold enough incentive to write in? I personally like it because it's easier to write that way, with a story to work off of, instead of just randomly appearing in battle after battle without something to go off of, or having conflicting personal stories creating the premise for the two people fighting.


*I hate the Gisela because it tends to just drag on and it bores me. I don't enjoy reading 7 pages to respond with my own 4, just to say that one group of troops started fighting another, or simply moved. That's just me though.

[Ataraxis]

Mission Board Tournaments.

[Atzar]

I was wondering, and I'm going to throw it out here to see what you think, but what if there was an actual story behind the tournament? Would that make a difference? I think what makes me like tournaments, other than the gisela*, is that I can create a story for the battle and have more fun with it that way. I think that helped the ToW as well, because it had a story behind it.

So, if regional activity was added into the reason behind the tournament, would it be more enticing? Or would it still not hold enough incentive to write in? I personally like it because it's easier to write that way, with a story to work off of, instead of just randomly appearing in battle after battle without something to go off of, or having conflicting personal stories creating the premise for the two people fighting.


*I hate the Gisela because it tends to just drag on and it bores me. I don't enjoy reading 7 pages to respond with my own 4, just to say that one group of troops started fighting another, or simply moved. That's just me though.

If it was a storyline that a wide audience found appealing, then I think that would be perfect.

[Letho]

Does anybody remember that one tournament we held where people wrote quests instead of battles? What was it called? Advernturers...Shit? Or something, I can't recall. But I think I remember it being rather cool because people actually did quests as a group, their quest was judged as quests usually are on Althanas and then the top scorers progressed. At least I think that's how it went.

[Visla Eraclaire]

The only problem I see with an "actual storyline" is that unless its excessively generic, while it does add an extra hook for people who want to be in the tournament, it might push some people away who were on the fence.

Essentially, those who want a tournament are going to make it fit in their story, but those who might be willing but not fully enthusiastic about a tournament are going to question whether their character fits.

You've got a balancing act. The more detailed the story, the more powerful the hook is for FEWER people. The more generic it is, the less reason there is to even have it.

I think, in the end, it's probably best to have some story because the people you drive off by having one are the sorts that are likely to drop out anyway. The problem is in crafting one that appeals to the most people and allows the greatest variety of competitors. It needs to be something more interesting than "Great Power X has Item Y and offers it to the winner of Tournament Z."

I think a tournament that at least offers something other than direct combat has been a long time coming. Competing to accomplish a mission would be one good option, already mentioned. The participants could choose whether to simply tell two different stories of how their characters attempted to accomplish the task or have their characters run into eachother some during the event, or have a direct confrontation.

The more freedom you give people the more people are going to participate and the more people are going to stay, because they're doing something they'd want to do anyway.

[Aiko]

What about, as one of my standard off the wall ideas, a dungeon crawl. Not a simple go to room A to find a way to room b and win the prize, maybe fight monster C along the way. No no no.

This would be a dungeon unique in that it would be one derived from the characters own minds. Yes we write the characters, but are we our characters? I mean, how well do our characters really know each other?

Letho is famous ICly. Probably has a few close friends that know the real Letho. But how well does even the closest of his IC friends really know the hero of Corone? Could they find their way through a dungeon derived from the man's own thoughts? Not a dungeon he'd ideally build, but one created from his every thought and emotion, the good, the bad, and the ugly.

For a tournament, one with a storyline, it'd be a mix of everything. Continuing on with my Letho example. Someone else, like, say Visla, just cause Visla posted last, finds herself in this dungeon, and has to escape before losing her own mind permanently, and becoming little more than a drooling vegetable. In this, its a quest. Yet Letho also has to write against Visla, because its his character's mind. In this, its a battle.

IF you escape, you get a bonus, and aren't a temporary vegetable, so there's a mini-reward along the way. The thread is judged and whomever scores higher, continues to the next round, either as the dungeon writer, or the dungeon crawler.

For this to be a storyline, we'd need an NPC capable of causing all this, and though I haven't used him often, I have used him before. Destrudo's father, the lord of Shadows. His tagline has always been "He knows your own mind better than you do, and won't hesitate to use it against you as a weapon."

This brings me to how to end this tournament. Play progresses until only one strong minded individual remains. At this, they've already won the tourny from one standpoint, and deserve a significant IC bonus. But what about the storyline? Well, by this point, they've broken free of Shadowlord's power, and face him. If they can beat him, they get an even bigger bonus, something that could attract just about anyone. Something, Adamantine...

As for why Shadowlord's doing this in the first place, well, I've always planned on bringing him over to the primary regions looking for his son. That's why he'd be here, as for why he'd put everyone under his power like this, he'd do so to ferret his son out from wherever he's hiding, to kill him and prevent his son from taking his rightful place as Emperor of Chronus.

Well, that's my idea.

[Slavegirl]

What would you think of a Scavenger Hunt? I haven't worked out the details but it is something I've played with and discussed. (Don't yell at me Task or Max for not bringing it up in the mod forums first please!!)

Basically at first it would be a rare but not unique item that the teams are looking for (a special type of crystal from Dheathain or something like that), these items would be in different regions for each leg of the hunt. When you finish that thread, the judges decide if you actually got the item or not by how well you scored (maybe you lost it, it was stolen by bandits, it broke, it was a fake!) - that's not set in stone. Thing is, time is of the essence, but so is quality if you do it that way. Here's why - you have to finish that leg of the hunt before you find out the next item to be found, and that is pm'ed to you so others don't find out. In the end, the top three (or some arbitrary number) teams get to compete for the grand prize of the scavenger hunt. Perhaps the runners up get prizes as well.

Like I said there are details to be worked out, and it may not happen at all. If it does it won't be till this summer either way, because I want the staff to have plenty of time to work out the kinks so it runs smoothly and has the most benefits for the players involved. I just think the fact that it will have a storyline that is driven by the players, time will be more important than usual, and quality will hopefully be as well, should generate more interest. Especially if there are really nifty prizes in the end.

So, any interest?

[Thoracis]

For a short time Dirks and I were running a different RP board where we attempted a tournament somewhat like what's being mentioned here. It was years and years ago now, so I don't remember all the details all exact-like, but there was an overall storyline which was essentially broken down in to different missions. Each thread in each round was broken down to a small chunk of the overall storyline and had some sort of mission or goal assigned to it. 4-5 people were in each thread, the setting was provided for them, and off they went.

There was certainly interest in it, but it never really got past the first round because I moved, as I was so prone to doing at the time, and lost internet for like two months.

As far as "vanilla" battles go, I think what separates most tournament winners is the ability to incorporate a story. Over the course of the various tournaments here I think one thing that was clearly established was that developing a story in a tournament was a sure way to go far, simply because there was some continuity and it wasn't just one pointless battle after another.

[Ataraxis]

Incorporating a story is a good way to win a battle tournament, but just looking at the last tournament, only a portion of the participants managed to do it (the rest having either gone AWOL or simply dropping out halfway through out of disinterest). Those stories are rarely a joint effort, and usually ideas one of the participants comes up with while the other forcefully fits into it. Sometimes they find a good way to do it, but that's rarely the case, and one side eventually stops writing, or at least stops writing seriously.

Another problem with battle tournaments is that once you're pitted against someone you know is clearly the better writer, you're more likely not to even try - why waste hours writing in a battle you know you will lose and for which you will only get one fifth of the winner's rewards when you're probably already trying to make time in a busy schedule for the tournament? If Battle Tourney loser XP was boosted to something actually worth their while, that would be ONE better incentive to stop people from dropping out.

That was my two cents on battle tournies, but as I said before, a Mission Board Tournament has the potential to solve most of the problems we have with battle tournaments.

To solve Visla's problem of a detailed storyline making the tournament more desirable but for fewer participants, a Mission Board Tournament would provide a large set of different storylines, and whether or not they'd be related to one another in the grand scheme of things is something that can be discussed later. Just looking at Althanas, the number of quests clearly trumps the number of battles, meaning that a variety of factors such as general interest, ease of inserting a character into a storyline not necessarily your own and writing preferences for the former make it more likely for a quest to completed. If anything, we'd naturally get a better turnout for this type of tournament, and a lower drop rate.

Having a choice of missions once the the pair-ups are done allows for them to actually choose a story together, and ahead of time. They'll be able to actually discuss it and make it work for both of them, increasing the average quality of these quests in comparison to past events which were rather 'lather-rinse-repeat'. Surprising people with settings that they have 50% chances of hating the very day their round starts is NOT a good way of keeping interest, even if it fits the habitual definition of tournament better. But since this is a writing tournament, and good planning plays such a huge part in our process, I think that evaluating one's ability to plan in advance is preferable than one's ability to adapt on the spot.

Coming up with the Missions doesn't necessarily have to be extra work, either: take actual, existing regional mission boards. Continent Writers could even come up with mini-FQ plotlines and let the participants plan a free-form quest depending on it. Whatever you choose to do, you'll breathe in life to mission boards that have been sitting around, you're giving people extra incentive to complete them by making it a tournament, AND participants will directly affect the regions ICly and leave their mark (I'm aware that people can already do that, but either the story is rejected from canon or has so few viewers it might as well have been retconned two weeks later). Things are likelier to stick ICly in something this huge, mostly because the extra readers you probably wouldn't get outside the tournament will remember what happened in your quest. The high-profile event itself makes stories more likely to be made into canon material (if it isn't done so automatically).

tl;dr:

Battle Tournaments

Depending on good, player-made storylines for a battle to buffet activity here is like putting your money on a statistical aberration. Those who are good at it will go to the finals, 75% of the others will lose out or drop out. Any question where the interest went?
In a battle, once Roger McNealy is pitted against Gordon Freeman, McNealy is less likely to use his little free time to write a losing battle that will give him the low rewards that losers get in a battle. If you want a battle tournament, normalizing loser rewards into something actually worthwhile would be a good place to start.


Mission Board Tournaments

Rather than a single over-arching storyline (which can REALLY interest a select few, but drive out another portion of the player-base that just can't get into it ICly), use a variety of quest prompts or actual mission board missions that may or may not be related to one another. It's basically 'do what everyone here is already doing everyday, but with more interest and more reasons to go the whole nine yards'.
Instead of assigning a quest to a pair-up the very day the round starts, reveal the pair-ups in advance and let them choose what type of quest they want to do: specific mission board quests, mission board free-form, Mini-FQ free-form, etc. Value their ability to plan something they both like rather than adapt to something one or both might hate (Which the Magus Cup partly did, but instead of being assigned a plot by those in charge of the tournament, one participant comes up with it and the opponent begrudgingly goes along with it).
Increase regional involvement and the impact that threads have on the regions. Basically, improved influence of the world by the character base, and improved knowledge of these events from players who did not participate in them specifically.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I have no complaints or corrections about the bullet points presented by Ataraxis (shocking). If something like what he suggests for a mission-based tournament actually happened, you stand a decent chance of breaking the failure streak of tournaments.

The key is just adding a structure and added incentives to what people do anyway. People like writing and I think they're happy to take a few suggestions and adventure hooks and run with them. Just give them enough freedom to make it fit with their story. Don't name everyone or give them locked down characters and locations. Don't over-detail things like the FQ occasionally did. Give characters a trope or a theme to work with, perhaps somewhere more specific than the Vignette contests but less constrained than an FQ mission.

The only problem I foresee is in match-ups and choice. If you just let everyone choose their mission, it loses the kind of constrained nature that is an element of a tournament. Seeing how someone functions within some time and theme constraints is, I think, somewhat essential to the competition. Balancing that concern with the desire to let writers do things that suit their characters is going to be a big issue. Perhaps let people choose more in early rounds and constrain later... or fit subsequent rounds to the prior choices made by those who advanced. The latter opens up a lot of room for judge manipulation and extra work though.

Other thoughts on this issue?

[Ataraxis]

That was one of my concerns, yeah. I wanted to see if I wasn't the only one first, but basically, this was my idea: more freedom at the beginning, since there would hopefully be about 16-32 players. Anything specific would be too hard to manage either way, so start off the tournament like 'Everyday on Althanas, but better'. As the rounds advance, though, there are fewer players to manage and you can increase the 'competitive constraints' gradually, just enough to increase challenge without people dropping out (streamlining the mission board, adapting to threads that happened in the previous round, increasing the general canonical importance of these quests, etc). Higher-profile quest prompts near the finals would be an incentive in and of itself while matching the higher constraints without losing much of the flexibility that got these players there in the first place.

It's a concept that interests me, but I'm aware it has a lot of kinks to work out, most of which I hope will eventually be worked out here.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I think it's a fantastic plan and the only real problem is staff involvement. There's going to be a significant lag between rounds judging the threads and making the next round's prompts.

I think the best thing to do is come up with Round 1 and Round 2 prompts at the same time. The round 2 prompts are essentially a sequel to the round 1 ones which is general enough to incorporate most solutions to the first prompt. Some changes might be needed but they should be minor. Have judges assigned to and aware of the prompts and the people they will be judging from the word go. Try to have them read as the round progresses so that they can get out judgments quickly.

After Round 2, the numbers should be manageable enough that tailored prompts for the 3rd and subsequent rounds are feasible. Depending on the numbers you're looking at, you may want to limit entries at the beginning to one character per player, and then if you're lacking, fill in with alts on a first-come-first-served basis. I think 16 people would be pretty reasonable to get, but you might be a few short. Whereas if you allowed alts, I think you'd end up with 32 pretty easily, but... then one person drops and you easily have 5 different competitions ruined.

[Saxon]

And what do you think would be a stronger incentive for participation from start to finish? EXP and GP benefits have, for the most part, proven insufficient. IC benefits maybe? The last Gisela - I think it was the last one, anyway, I've been away for awhile - offered a Powergroup HQ as the grand prize if I recall correctly, and it was also a success.

How about money? I know I'd have kept myself as a region writer if I was being paid to do it (That and a contract with rights of ownership. =P). That's about as 'incentive' as you can get. Actually, in reality, I'm not sure there's an IC incentive big enough to cover complete participation within the tournament, which is the problem. People won't write novella length work repeatedly without some sort of sizeable gain from it.. unless you're from the minor percentage on the site here who can write novels of threads for fun.

I agree with you, though, that a tournament needs to be administered properly from start to finish in order for it to work. We've seen at least two or three examples in the last couple years of what happens when the person running the show just steps off the plate mid-swing.

As for the Gisela, at least from my participation of it, it has never worked out well. It runs on the same model all tournaments seem to. Long, round-based challenges with two people facing off on the top. It takes months or perhaps even a year for the tournament to reach full cycle and I don't know of anyone here who has the attention span to make that death march. A better idea for more popularity around tournaments is to run it off a simple idea, keep it running and make sure it reaches its cycle in perhaps a third of the time it takes regular tournaments to complete. It could contain the interest people desire with IC incentives and allow for the site to generate more than one tournament within the busy season without stepping on everyone's toes.


Does anybody remember that one tournament we held where people wrote quests instead of battles? What was it called? Advernturers...Shit? Or something, I can't recall. But I think I remember it being rather cool because people actually did quests as a group, their quest was judged as quests usually are on Althanas and then the top scorers progressed. At least I think that's how it went.

Adventurer's Crown. It was a disaster. Unique idea, but from what I remember there really wasn't enough manpower to keep the thing running long enough for people who were interested in it to finish. My opinion of it aside, it really boiled down to a very, very complex idea being carried out in tournament form. I'm a big supporter of K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple, Stupid.), and I think instead of trying to go for grandeur here, the tournaments should focus on minor events or concepts that everybody can get their head around. We all like the idea of over arching plots, but from what something like the FQ has shown us, it takes a considerable amount of time and effort to tailor that together and I don't even think in our busy season that the site has the member base to endorse it.

To the globe-trotters out there;

After running the last chapter for the FQ, especially how hard it was to even get the fucking thing started again, I am completely anti-global event anything. The last thing this site needs is another event that'll sit on the board rotting for years until its periodically revived only to fall into hibernation again. If you want success, I suggest moving expectations down a couple notches to more manageable levels.






Mission Board Tournaments

Rather than a single over-arching storyline (which can REALLY interest a select few, but drive out another portion of the player-base that just can't get into it ICly), use a variety of quest prompts or actual mission board missions that may or may not be related to one another. It's basically 'do what everyone here is already doing everyday, but with more interest and more reasons to go the whole nine yards'.
Instead of assigning a quest to a pair-up the very day the round starts, reveal the pair-ups in advance and let them choose what type of quest they want to do: specific mission board quests, mission board free-form, Mini-FQ free-form, etc. Value their ability to plan something they both like rather than adapt to something one or both might hate (Which the Magus Cup partly did, but instead of being assigned a plot by those in charge of the tournament, one participant comes up with it and the opponent begrudgingly goes along with it).
Increase regional involvement and the impact that threads have on the regions. Basically, improved influence of the world by the character base, and improved knowledge of these events from players who did not participate in them specifically.


This could be done with regions and their writers specifically, no features or tournaments involved. I'm not kidding. If this were micro-managed properly, mission board.. uhhh.. 'micro-events' could be a good measure of keeping activity up while also progressively working with the regions in their own storylines. Just a thought.

[Christoph]

The problem with tournaments is that if forces players to battle people they may not want to (or that they stand no chance against), and finish within an often unrealistically short timeframe. And then there's a huge lag in between rounds as the battles are judged, which causes more people to lose interest.

I think a continuous battle league of some sort would work better, because it allows people to battle on their own time while still staying in a competitive tournament-ish structure. The Pagoda was close to that, and it's gone back and forth between being very successful and rather dead. The main flaw with the Pagoda was the Hierarch system and the pressure it puts on the players, which causes them to go inactive. So, what you need is a battle league LIKE the Pagoda, only without the hierarch positions.

[Thoracis]

There was a league like that!

In fact, I co-created it. I couldn't tell you what we called it though. Dirks would remember.

Basically a season would last x amount of time and you could fight at your own pace within that time limit. It took some tinkering, because the first season I think there were a couple people that just knocked out a stupid amount of battles.

There ended up being a pretty fair battle and ranking system. There were different IC rewards too, like magical items and such to the winners.

If I recall it ended up making it three or four seasons before it died off.

[Taskmienster]

Tournament of War? You registered, could have a max of 3 battles going at once, lasted 3-5 months. At the end, whoever was on top won the reward, followed by second and third place.

[Thoracis]

Thank you, sir!

I don't know who came up with that name though... I'll blame that on Dirks!

I thought by second and third seasons we were starting to figure it out though... Activity died once we did figure out the most effective way to run it, go figure, but I thought it was plenty of fun.

[Atzar]

Wasn't it the Theater of War?

[/nitpick]

[Taskmienster]

Tis True, it was the Theater of War... lol. Oops. The ToW was one of the most fun things I participated in on the site, though I only got to really get into the first one. Placed 3rd overall. The others were better run, from what I heard, but I didn't really get a chance to be active around then with the military running my life at the time. :p

What about them was working so well, Thor? I don't remember the third season at all, and only remotely remember anything about the second... something about gems that you took from other players or something like that. Whatever it was, it'd be interesting to know in case we consider running it again.

[Max Dirks]

What's sad is that I have all of the ToW rules for all three seasons saved on my hard drive.

Christoph hit the nail on the head too. The reason why recent tournaments have been rather inactive is because of ridiculous wait times between rounds. I ran all the tournaments back in the day and it was the only thing I did. I'd have rounds judged in two days max and people were naturally eager to jump back in. So in many ways the inactivity is my fault for taking more responsibilities on the site. That said, I do not now, nor have I ever believed, that finite time frames for battles has ever hurt tournaments. The first tournament ever (the Serenti) only had 1 week battles and it was our most active ever.

Really, a single moderator should be in charge of a tournament. Provided that person stays interested, the tournament should run smoothly.

[Christoph]

So, how about getting the Theater of War going again in some capacity (re-evaluating the rules just to make sure everything runs smoothly), and see how that goes. At worst, it dies and the staff knows that there's not enough interest to have a successful tournament. Ideally, it will help with both gauging and creating interest.

As a suggestion, allow a wide range of freedom in terms of what battles players can do. Want to do a 2v2 or some odd match-up? Sure. Love army battles? Then go for it. I would actually be interested enough in something like that to actually participate.

[Silence Sei]

I'm all for appointing a single mod for a tournament, or even specific single mods for certain tournies. Mod A gets tourney 1 2 and 3, Mod B gets 4 5 and 6. Something like that, you know?

[Christoph]

The problem is that it's hard to have a single mod judging an entire tournament in a timely manner without the quality of the judgments suffering.

[Slavegirl]

You could limit the tournament judgments to the short judgments only. That would speed it up, and then if someone had a question they could ask for details later.

[Visla Eraclaire]

I'm all for appointing a single mod for a tournament, or even specific single mods for certain tournies. Mod A gets tourney 1 2 and 3, Mod B gets 4 5 and 6. Something like that, you know?

The odds of any mod being around six tournaments from now is questionable.

Short judgments for tournaments are fine, that's generally what it ends up being anyway once the time crunch happens. Frankly, one or two mods who are personally responsible for a tournament is the best way to do it. They can be reading as the round progresses. You know who to look to if things are slow. You don't have to go and find people as the tournament progresses (which is what happened with the Magus Cup).

I don't think time limits on rounds is a problem. I know Dirks said the same thing, I didn't see anyone saying it was, but I figured I'd agree with him when I can, since it's rare. 1 or 2 weeks is perfectly reasonable. Frankly, if we did some of these more interesting tournament styles it wouldn't even be a problem to have a complete thread in that time.

Ideally, if these could be set up so they aren't quite as opponent dependent, that would be helpful. The best would be if the people are just working in parallel and don't actually have to wait for the other person to post. I realize that takes the direct competition feeling out of it for a lot of people. A compromise would be something other than a battle confrontation so that each character could post a significant amount of actions and progress with each post, advancing the story. I think the problem of incomplete threads comes with the territory of, Post 1: Introduce character, setting. Post 2: Introduce character, first attack Post 3: Respond to first attack, counter etc. etc.

If you get 8 posts, which... lots of times you don't even get that, the battle has been going on... 20 seconds? a minute? Just not a lot of drama because the actions are so brief for each person. If it was a different sort of competition, people could be doing the amount of action and progress that you see in the average quest post, which can be anything from ten minutes to a day's worth of events...

[Hysteria]

Instead of using existing mods to judge the threads you could have a few non-mod members who volunteer handle it. They would need to be experienced, but from what I have seen there are quite a few who fit that bill. Then the activity of the tourney would not effect the rest of the board to the extent it would have. You would however need someone with mod+ powers administrating the whole thing, closing threads, assigning judges, and so on.

From what I have read there are some fantastic ideas for competions going around. Participating in RPing groups can be a good way to go. I was once in a cash prize tournament which was in pairs. It went pretty well, though I don't think money as a reward is generally a good idea.

My vote would be for the scavanger hunt with realism and score dictating if you get to the next round or not.

I think there are a few things that can destory something like this:
Delay between rounds (both in judging time and also if you complete a thread early and have to wait for the next round to start).
Who you are RPing with/against (if their style suits yours, if they are active, if you don't like reading their writing, if they make it hard to respond, if you know (and like them), if it is a novel experience).
The Story. (how it fits with your character and how interesting/unique it is)
The IC and OOC rewards (does it have a lasting effect IC, do you feel you've accomplished something OOC, was it worth the time and effort, is there a lasting reminder of your achivement)
Previous Expereince in tournament (were the others you have been in fun, did they finish, did it go inactive, did you get the crap beaten out of you, do you feel you will go better next time)

I am going to also go out on a limb and say that most of you in this disscussion have RPed together in the past, maybe you would enjoy doing it again and maybe you won't. Because you are the core of the forum, that will probably be one of the biggest deciding factors.

[Logan]

Glad to see so much activity here...

It doesn't matter much though if the requirements aren't met (and yes, Slavegirl and Task are correct...the time period or lack thereof is intentionally left out...)

The requirement has until the beginning of May to be met.

The idea behind the push is not to see more activity in general, it is to see activity with a focus on quality. If you look and think about the requirements, there is a quality ideal attached to them. And a high quality ideal attached at that.

Not every thread will qualify, and most won't that I've seen of late.

As of right now, the challenge has been up one week, and we have had 0 links posted.

The challenge has been laid, and not one has answered (as of yet). All of you debating the finer points of what makes a tournament great...have yet to answer it yourselves.

You think you're so great a writer? Prove it.

Not to me...but to Althanas.

The Gauntlet has been laid.

Who will answer the call?

[Saxon]

The challenge has been laid, and not one has answered (as of yet). All of you debating the finer points of what makes a tournament great...have yet to answer it yourselves.

You think you're so great a writer? Prove it.

Not to me...but to Althanas.

The Gauntlet has been laid.

Who will answer the call?

Way to overhype it.



You could limit the tournament judgments to the short judgments only. That would speed it up, and then if someone had a question they could ask for details later.

That'd be ideal to keep the workload short, but as Visla said, judgments seem to turn into just a numbers games in later rounds anyway. I'd suggest trying to get mods to work in features as a team. These positions are all voluntary, after all, and this is a hobby, so it seems very impractical and unlikely to allow one member of the staff to bear all the weight for a major event on their own. Spreading the hurt by keeping these people assigned to a tournament's welfare could get faster responses to judgments, smoother transitions between rounds, and more coherent planning.

The goal would be to assemble a team of people to work together and be accountable for that specific tournament. They aren't cross-trained to go deal with Althanas' other problems or work in an area of the site that is conveniently lacking a moderator at that point in time, they're specialized for that particular area. It could limit burn-outs, keep people accountable and allow higher to be more direct when speaking to a group of people already expected to get these tournaments running rather then trying to plan and execute them as a staff every season.

[Thoracis]

The problem people had with that in the past was the "what if" game.

Mod A sucks! If Mod B had judged my thread I would have won!

[Silence Sei]

It's true, and I should know. Even when I'm not a mod, I'm always Mod B. XD

Oh yeah, and heres my battle with Revenant.

It doesn't meet one of the high score requirements, but it is a completed battle.

http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=20281 (http://http://www.althanas.com/world/showthread.php?t=20281)