Talk:Event E2/Proposal Falkenberg

Commitment

This is a huge commitment from players to a very rigid time schedule in a single week. Do you think an inability to make the schedule will limit your participants? Jacquilynne / Jasandrea 14:24, 12 January 2006 (PST)

It could potentially, yes. I do have a thought on how to partially fix that though, list judges (and their normally available times) on the wiki, along with double elim tourney brackets, and allow players to contact a judge to observe a match, and update the wiki accordingly. As long as I had judges available most times of day, this would allow participants to work out a time that was fitting for their match. However, I would think to make that more likely that all the matches could happen in time, to extend it to 2 weeks, and move the gunning bakeoff to the middle weekend, and the sloop race to the last weekend. Falkenberg 15:31, 12 January 2006 (PST)

I would just like to bump this because I agree, the time commitment seems huge. In the past, some events that involve huge time commitments have even been deemed "griefing" or "against the spirit of the game." Y!PP works so hard to be an enjoyable game, and with the introduction of poker besides, it might want to be wary of creating/encouraging unhealthy time situations. Or, you may end up simply eliminating anyone with a job (who makes ample time for weekend events but cannot do weeknights -- quite a significant population I would guess). What would make this event great is to extent the timeline even further -- say, 2-3 months held on weekends. Sadly, that would exclude it from this contest, so I can understand if you don't want to do that, but just thought I should suggest it.... --Elsquido 23:21, 5 February 2006 (PST)

I agree that this is a rather daunting challenge for any player, and the people running it, however for the purposes of entry into the event event, it has been fit into two weeks. Should I not be shortlisted, and run the event anyhow, I will probably extend the format (although maybe not as long as 2-3 months, I feel that would be worse than cramming it in two weeks). I will not be including poker yet, although if not shortlisted, I may take the time to work it in before running it. --Falkenberg 00:02, 6 February 2006 (PST)

Number of Players?

I had the thought, that with the increased time, and more open format, it would be possible to double the amount of participants in the bulk of the competition. Basically take the top 2/3 (32 pirates) of pirates from the qualifier instead of the top 1/3 (16 pirates. Gunning would be divided up into two groups of 16 spaced apart on the saturday so as to provide more flexibility to the contestants (scores between the two groups is one concern with doing that). I would need to update scoring to do this, as well as potentially have more judges available. Let me know what you think of this idea.--Falkenberg 16:32, 16 January 2006 (PST)

Just a quick clarification -- for the pre-qual, do you mean only 48 players compete, or open number invited and top 48 go on to qual round (I got confused reading it)... thanks! --Elsquido 23:22, 5 February 2006 (PST)

Basically on Saturday I will run prequals at 3 different times, 48 pirates can fit in each time slot (due to the 16 bilge stations times 3 rounds in each prequal). The top 16 (1/3) of the pirates from each prequal round will proceed to the qualifier. The qualifer will repeat the test with those 48 from the prequals, and the top 16 (or 32 if I were to get shortlisted, and the mentors and I decided that was a change for the better) will proceed onto the main bulk of the competition. Probably more confusing now as I am tired. --Falkenberg 23:49, 5 February 2006 (PST)

scheduling flexibility

If a participant could attend everything but the race on the 18th (due to that day being their sons 10th birthday or something like that) would they be able to complete the sloop part at a different time? --Shandra

Due to the Sloop race involving PVP aspects, this would give that player at a later/earlier time an advantage of not having other participants around to PVP him/her. The point of this portion is not just a test of soloing ability, but solo PVP ability. Start time may be adjusted during mentoring, or the event itself to accomodate as many people as possible. Within the restraints of the point of this portion of the event, the complete flexibility of say the tourney portions, is not possible (in any way I can see)--Falkenberg 11:28, 23 January 2006 (PST)

Gunning

I really like the idea of doing this competition. It's been far too long since the last one of this type. But what I really want to comment on is the gunning. The gunning you are going after seems to be the navy style gunning. My guess is with this contest you want to test more than that and in more real time situations. So I'd suggest you consider looking at this style. It was a fast moving style with little standing around. Besides, it would fit in with the way you did the qualifiers (PvP bake off). It also would allow for clear rankings. In the timed method you have to rely on chat logs. This is really just a suggestion as I think it worked a tad better and may be less of a headache for you. --Peanutswench 19:00, 24 January 2006 (PST)

I admit to not being a gunner, or knowing what determines the better gunner, your idea sounds good, however I would like to hear the opinion of a few gunners on which is the better test of ability, the style that was used for the gunning familiar bakeoff (the one I am currently using in the event description), or the one you suggested. --Falkenberg 20:00, 27 January 2006 (PST)

The problem, really, is that each method of gunning bakeoff favors a different set of players. The timed gunning heavily favors people who can work with any board quickly and efficiently, while the PVP style gunning gives a boost to those who prefer to find one board and keep it the entire time. Both methods can be very effective for pillaging; however, I would generally consider the latter to be faster (pieces already on the board and at speed outweighs the delay of the firing animations, IMO). I didn't participate in the second event, unfortunately, so I can't give a really informed comparison. Perhaps it'd be beneficial to seek out several people who did participate in both, and get a consensus. --Inuki 00:41, 3 February 2006 (PST)

Remembering back, there was a contest of similar style in the past (http://forums.puzzlepirates.com/community/mvnforum/viewthread?thread=24537&offset=0) which ended up being, well, a logistic headache, and ended up with a number of people grumbling. Have you read through that forum entry and thought about some of the issues? I can see you extended the time from 5 minutes to 6 minutes, which seems to make the event a lot happier already, so cheers on that call! But I would just warn that this format seemed to be rather difficult to execute; the heavy time commitment required by players, the boat noise affecting the OM and the resulting no-talk rule required, issues with chat log / stopwatch, concerns about cheating, etc. I only raise these since you say you have little event running experience, and this seemed to be such a complicated format. I'd recommend getting loads of help for this format if possible! --Elsquido 23:27, 5 February 2006 (PST)

I think what it comes down to is whether you want to test pure skill and speed in gunning or test who gets the luckiest board to sit on. Once you decide which you want to test, the format is obvious. And the change to 6 minutes does make a huge difference. --Fannon 09:49, 6 February 2006 (PST)

While my gut says fastest is better, I want to ask some questions about Peanutswench's format that I just dont understand before I make any decision. Would I be putting 8 contestants on each of 2 brigs? Or all 16 on 1? 4 non gunning puzzlers on a brig plus judges doesnt seem like enough to adequetly run one. Either way, do a pvp (either with the other brig, or another ship), how many turns do we go, or is it simply based on a time? Than you port, get scores, top gunner moves on (although I think I will do 2 so as to not wind up with only 4 in the final round), swap gunner out, rinse/repeat. I can see how to get the top 1-4, but the others will simply be groups (not bad, just need to work on score balancing). It does seem to be a lot easier format for the judges (players as well?), and is more like a "normal" bakeoff, but I dont want to take the easy road out if it isnt the better way of telling who is best (would still appreciate feedback from other gunners, and even navers, as you know what you want in battle, on this). --Falkenberg 09:46, 7 February 2006 (PST)

Ok, I was the person specifically in charge of the Nu Casino gunning tournament (with significant help from Nut). Here's how it went:

• All guns on brigs were preloaded before the event began.
• Each brig was loaded with about 16 people. Not all were contestants - some were just watcher/puzzlers. You need the puzzlers only if you want to place move tokens to roll barrels. This contest can be run without that, if you choose. In that case, all you need is four gunners per brig per battle. And one judge sitting in a puzzle on each ship to view the duty report.
• The loaded ships deport and engage in PvP.
• From the time leaving port through the first X turns (we used X=2), the gunners have a chance to look for a board. This helps minimize the "lucky board" factor. More turns to look = less Lucky board factor.
• At the end of turn X, all cannons fire, emptying all cannons on each contestant's board. From this point on, no contestant is allowed to repeatedly leave a board, to prevent the one-gun incredible. We allowed players to leave their board up to three times, mostly to let people keep playing if their board booched. No one left their puzzle during our contest.
• Beginning with turn X, the all available shots are fired each turn for N turns, so at the start of each turn, each contestant has a fully dirty board with four cannons to load. We used N=10, so battles lasted just over 5 minutes.
• After the last turn of firing, contestants loaded all four of their cannons, so the brig would be ready for the next round. When all cannons were loaded on both ships, the brigs disengaged and ported to view the duty report. Top Y players from each ship moved on (we used Y=1 or Y=2 depending on the round) and others were eliminated.

Our contest had about 40 contestants, and took just over an hour and a half once things got going. Amphitrite's contest had maybe 65 contestants, and took over 5 hours.

Downsides to our method include board booches, which have increased probability with time in puzzle. Shorter battles can help prevent this. It also is nice, but difficult, to preplan who will gun against who in the early rounds, so you don't have 4 ults on one ship and 4 GMs on another. Because this is not the first event in your contest, seeding pirates may be significantly easier for you.

Because you will only have 16 participants, you can have an easier time running this than we did, because you will only need maybe one or two volunteers (back-up judges) other than yourself. Instead of having two brigs against each other, you could just have one go against a solo sloop. This will make it take a little longer than doing brig v. brig, but will keep you from needing help, and would still be about 30 minutes faster than the method you proposed. More importantly, this will also have far less boring downtime per contestant, because they can puzzle each round if you/they choose.

If you want to talk to participants in our event, the top four people (the only ones I can easily recall) were Springheel, Salvia, Drilly, and Nattee.

Either event will test gunning skill, so it's just a matter of what way you think fits with your event the best. We had a time issue so we went for this one. --Squashbuckle 16:26, 8 February 2006 (PST)

Thanks for answering my questions. It does sound like it would save lots of hastle, and still give a very good test of skill. Since I realized I plan on being in another town (*crosses fingers for internet access*) that weekend, it would be easier for a trusted secondary to run should I not manage to find a reliable connection. I will wait till the short list is announced, but it does seem like a very good idea. And I know, planning an event when you are planning to be on the road is not entirely wise, but these things happen, and with a shorter time for that portion of the event it will be easier to coordinate for players, and event planner. --Falkenberg 18:31, 8 February 2006 (PST)