Talk:Event E2/Proposal Looseweed

Template & caps

Please switch the username in the template to be uppercase so various linky bits in the template will work. This is just due to the wiki being a bit strict about considering uppercase & lowercase as completely different letters. --Guppymomma 18:37, 27 January 2006 (PST)

response: I *think* I got all instances of lowercase usernames changed in it. Let me know if I didn't. It's a bit confusing sometimes, because the ypp forum ID is lowercase, and the YPPedia login name is uppercase.

Ketchy Cubby

How is this different than previous incarnations of Ketchy Cubby?

response: It's entirely different. Original ketchy cubby called for leaving from port, taking an opportunistic potshot at a boat otherwise occupied with more important things, and then running for the safe zone once you'd suceeded. Furthermore, in original ketchy cubby you had a sloop full of crew to help you with damage control and token generation.

King of the Ring requires a participant to circumnavigate the entire board without porting, and to get hits on 4 seperate vessels whose attentions will be trained at the participants instead of on attackers. King of the Ring is also a solo game, which tests puzzling as well as navigation.

Really, the only direct similarity between the two is that they're both blockade games that use sloops.

I am interested in whether or not the differences were clear enough in the entry. I didn't feel the need to explain how to play the original, since the rules for each were so different. If they need to be more obvious then I welcome suggestions.

• No, that's fine. Given that it had the same name as the previous event, I was wondering, and figured it was easier to ask (since you already knew) than try to find rules for previous Ketchy Cubbies and do the comparison myself.

Time of an entry

The only meaningful time factor is "number of turns", possibly with tie breakers determined by how few tokens you needed on the last turn.

Trying to use a timestamp introduces potentials for around 30 seconds of randomnes that is not in control of the person sailing the ship. Behindcurtai

Oooo. Good point. Counting turns is a pain in the ass, though. Perhaps we could leave it to the contestant to say when he's out, over /jcrew. That at least puts the onus on the competitor and deflects potential whiney tart. Although honestly, looking at this event, I don't expect any more than 5 people or so to finish at all. Frigs hurt when they shoot solo sloops.

(I went ahead and made that change to the entry)

I'm also thinking about limiting the obstacle boats further. Either limiting them to 1 shot per move phase (no doubleshot for the brig and frig) or requiring the brig and frig to station themselves on point clusters, so the contestants have a better idea where their targets are going to be. The more I think about it, the more I think that with free reign to blast stuff, nobody's making it past that frig. Looseweed

I agree with that last point - one shot per round is probably enough to deal with. :) --Crystal 16:15, 13 February 2006 (PST)

If so, then perhaps the best thing would be to use merch frigs and merch galleons instead of war vessels. They'd be easier to staff.Looseweed

Aye, that could work. As long as that last shot is LARGE. --Crystal 11:35, 14 February 2006 (PST)

Looseweed?

You say: "I'm Looseweed. I do this kind of stuff."

Looseweed would never speak like that! Irey bruva! Come back to us, Loose!

In all seriousness, I think this event sounds fun. I would consider providing more substantive prizes for 2nd through 4th place, though. --Squashbuckle 17:17, 5 February 2006 (PST)

Why yu fe galang so mon? Lef me nuh boutde talksin! Howfor you spec I ghetsa bird talkin jamdown?  ;)

Regarding prizes, I'm not exactly sure how this stuff works. Hosting this event will assuredly break my personal bank to pay jobbers and rent the island, and I don't do a lot of trinket farming so I don't really know how trinkets work.

1) To give trinkets would I just need to request them from OMs? 2) If I want to do things without involving them, would I need to coordinate sponsors for the secondary prizes? Help Looterati! How does this work? Fandango gives out "we're going to blockade your island" as a prize, so my experiene is limited here... (hehe)

Looseweed

• giggles* ok. Well, Looterati has an Event Fund which supports individual pirate's finances when funding an event, and we also tend to sponsor each other's events if they appeal to us. I suspect, giving your many and talented friends, that if you asked around, there would be people willing to sponsor you with ships, swords, money and even spare trinkets. Considering the amount that you will personally be putting into this event, I think it is well worth asking the OMs whether any trinkets were possible, and also whether it's feasible to get a full or partial refund on the war chest for the event. For example, if you really think that very few of the contestants will make it to the end, a ribbon for each person who completes the course would be a lovely touch, as well as something for the winners. Artemis is going through these proposals, so hopefully she can comment on OM help with prizes. The only thing not in its favour in terms of OM-prize-support is that relatively few people will be able to take part as contestants. I think it sounds like a lot of fun, though, so cross your dreads and hope. --Crystal 16:22, 13 February 2006 (PST)

Better to email them or ask one on duty? Looseweed

For this event, sit tight and wait for Artemis to get as far as your event. She's going through them all and providing answers about OM assistance and prizes. --Crystal 11:34, 14 February 2006 (PST)

• I'm a bit concerned as to how long it will take for this to run, though. If you leave multiple ships going at once you run the risk of your decoy ships sinking and time running out, if you have ships go in multiples you run the risk of players having at each other (not necessarily a bad thing.)
• I would not recommend this as a familiar event because you simply can't guarantee that the decoy ships are fair to everyone, and the fact that it would run way too long!
• Trinkets, though, we can certainly do :)

--Artemis 12:26, 14 February 2006 (PST)

• I'm not particularly concerned with decoy ships sinking, because they're going to be crewed well, evasive, and we'll have replacements ready to hit the blockade board quickly. The only one that might sink is the sloop - small shot bounce off bigger vessels. I'm also not interested in preventing the participants from interacting (shooting each other). That's all part of the game.
• I expect a generally poor turnout, because people are going to have to get boats out to the ass end of the ocean (Meke) to participate at all, and not many people are truly skilled at solo pvp. Probably only 20 or 30 participants, which could be handled in one round. I expect the board will be set up by the 3rd blockade turn, and we can start releasing participants 1 per turn after that. With only 30 participants, the whole competition can be finished in 1 round. What we'd likely do, though, is divide into heats and handle 1/3 of the total participants in each round.
• The primary reason I want it to be a familiar event is that, to my knowledge, there's never been a familiar given out for battle navigation. I could be wrong, but I've never seen one, or I would have participated in it. OCL seabattle is just a max/max brawl. Furthermore, there's no way to really make a battlenav event "fair." Last man standing competitions are about hiding out early. Genenric sloop tag events are difficult to score. If extreme fairness really is that big of a litmus test, then I worry there never will be a familiar given out for battlenav, and battlenav is IMO the highest level puzzle in the game. It's unjust, and as a good battle navigator with only 'grand master' puzzle talent, I really want to help solve that problem for the other people like me who play the game. It's the whole reason I entered this contest.
• So if familiars aren't an option due to 'fairness,' then I'd prefer to tweek the event itself so that they are. What if each obstacle boat was required to travel in a circuit between two flags in their region? That might reduce any accusations of bias.

--Looseweed 16 February 2006 (PST)

• There was one given out previously in an ocl-style single elimination solo pvp tournament. It took quite a lot of time and isn't something I'm interested in trying again anytime soon, but it was done.
• I really just don't see how this could be tweaked to make it a successful familiar event and I think you're going to be far better off without one.

--Artemis 04:03, 20 February 2006 (PST)

• I'm not surprised a solo pvp tourney would take that long - I imagine it'd take days to complete. Hence the blockade board. Hence the fixed difficult tasks instead of untimed tasks. Hence the race aspect. Hence everything else.
• From my experience with running previous events with pretty good prizes (ketchy cubby 1, KC2, Gaea giveaway) I'm positive I won't get but possibly a max of 8 to 10 contestants to play this if there's not a significant prize, and by significant I mean a lot more than any battlenavver can pull down with 5 hours of brig pillaging. And those 8 to 10 would probably just be my friends anyway. Remember we only had 16 contestant boats when we were giving away Gaea Island.
• This is a real shame. I'm not interested in paying 100k out of my own pocket and doing the weeks of legwork required for this thing, not to mention the post-event video production and audio mixing, to have 60 pirates show up and job to entertain 8 and hand out a few ribbons. It makes no sense, and the poor turnout would nuke my chance at winning the "event:event:" anyway.
• In the end, I'll defer to Artemis's extensive experience with events to figure familiar prizes, and I'll defer with a smile on my face. But I'm going to be more than pissed if I see someone else run an event sometime in the future that has the same "problems" this one has, with a familiar prize tied to it.

Event proposal officially withdrawn

Looseweed

• I think it's a shame not to run it at all. Are you certain people wouldn't turn out to try even for a second-tier prize? It sounded fun to me. However, it's your decision. --Crystal 02:33, 21 February 2006 (PST)

• Would something like providing a prize to the obstacle boat navver who scored the most hits on the contestants do something to alleviate bias? -- Leif

• I'm positive, Crystal. To put things in perspective, we had to pull teeth to get anyone to participate in the Gaea Giveaway, and we were giving out an island. Nobody's going to sail to the ass end of nowhere to have an outside shot at winning a ribbon that says they participated in an event that nobody else showed up for. There's going to be a reasonably large contingent that will flat out boycot it because they percieve at as "Fandango," unless a familiar were attached to give it some legitimacy. (you guys aren't familiar with that concept, but I sure am) Plus, this event is going to require as much or more work as throwing an actual blockade, especially when you tag on the audio/video element, which was going to be the coolest part. Weighing the options, A) entertain 8 people or B) blockade a major island, I'll take B. Throw in the fact that I'm a poor player who's never had over 100k poe, and well, it's only worth it to give out a familiar.
• If Artemis thinks that A) we'll have too many participants to run it and B) they'll complain about bias, then I recommend ONE FINAL suggestion to alleviate Artie's concerns:

• 1) Have Devs nav (Cleaver, Nemo, Liz, Peghead) Allow me the chance to convince them to do it.

• 2) Cap the participants at 90 (30 per blockade round, released in heats of 2 every movement turn after the first 3 minutes.)

• That will fix Artie's problem for sure. But I definitely got the impression that those 2 problems weren't the real problem, from the abruptness of the discourse above.

I'm leaving town tomorrow morning and may not have internet access until after the submittal deadline, so it's probably a moot point, but I'll try to get to a cafe or something and check in on this article around Thursday or Friday. I doubt there's enough time to come to a resolution at this point.

Looseweed

To try to be perfectly honest and a bit more clear on why I don't want to give away a familiar for it. This wasn't one of my picks because of the logistical difficulties surrounding it.

• You require way too much help (whether paid or not) to actually get this off of the ground, I'm very much against any events requiring a lot of judges/help to run because they're a nightmare to organize.
• There's too many issues with things being uneven and potentially unfair, the board is different for each person entering, between each of the target ships and the other player ships who are out and about the board. I'm not saying there'd be any foul play but it's going to be incredibly hard to monitor if anyone does think there might have been.
• getting people started and through is going to be difficult. Once one person gets stuck for 10 minutes trying to hit target #2 you have a bottleneck and again, cries of unfairness because the first people didn't have as many other player ships to navigate around.

And some suggestions for making it better:

• Offer to provide ships for anyone who wants to join your crew as an officer, either as themselves or as an alt. Ships and supplies have been provided before for event blockades, it can be done again.
• Volunteers: You could try working to lower the numbers out helping on the targets. You could make the ships smaller, remove a ship or somehow make the players act as the targets as part of the event Actually, that could be quite ineteresting, something like a king of the hill sort of a deal. First one to score a hit gets to move on, if you get hit you remain in the quadrant as the target ship? There are issues with making people aware of the rules and making sure they follow them (and figuring out what to do if they don't follow the rules...) as well as potential issues with crewmates or friends helping each other along.

--Artemis 12:49, 21 February 2006 (PST)

I'll answer your issues as a courtesy, but it's pretty obvious at this point that I'm not going to get a prize for this thing, so it's definitely scrapped.

• Blockades are events. I know you may not have a lot of experience with them, but that's the truth. Part of the whole reason for Notorious Fandango was to show this very fact to the players, but it appears we may have failed to show that to the devs/OMs. That's unfortunate. My event proposal is nested inside a blockade, and "getting help" for it will be no different than getting help for any of the 17+ other blockade events NF has thrown over the past year. It's unfortunate that your position as "event manager" for OOO hasn't given you an personal experience with the most widely participated in event type in the game. I assure you that getting the jobbers won't be a problem - hell, people will job just to watch the event, just like they do for real blockades. "I require too much help" is no reason to nix the event.
• Everyone in this event plays on the same board, and order is randomly determined. This event, by its very nature, is more fair than any judged event. The winner will win on chance and skill, whereas poetry contests (for example) are won by writing what the judges want to hear. "Fairness" is no reason to nix the event.
• Anyone can clear a bottleneck by sinking the people in front of them, and bypassing the bottleneck is part of understanding the game. Hell, creating a bottleneck might be a good tactic to win the game! I hate to return to NF mantra, but we believe that playing to the rules of the game is part of the game, so you can't really point to a possible game tactic as a reason to nix the event.
• Getting your sloop to the blockade island with appropriate stock is part of the contest, and is one of the things that will keep the total number of entrants under 90 once a familiar is offered for the prize. If I had to offer 50 sloops to every tom dick and harry who wants to take one out and get sunk, then I agree with your assessment that the game would become unmanagable. I find it interesting that you're suggesting something to make it unmanagable, and in the same breath claiming it's unmanagable as an excuse to nix it.
• Volunteers will come because it's a blockade, they'll get paid, they like to puzzle, and they want to watch. I hate to say it, but your experience with "events" is not as applicable to this thing as my experience and my flag's experience with "blockade events" is. Lack of volunteer effort is not a reason to nix the event.

But yeah, it's pretty obvious where this is going. Unfortunately, fundamental differences in understanding between the event host and the OMs *are* a reason to nix an event, and for that failure in understanding I'm probably responsible. Consider the event nixed.

Addendum:

I am currently in negotiations with the Mad Professor to use Ostreum Island itself as my event prize. If this goes ahead, then I won't be withdrawing from E2, and I'll need exactly zero OM support to run the idea, so it goes ahead as planned.

-Loose

Lordkalvan replies: Huzzah! I was looking forward to entering (with little chance of winning, but tis the fun that counts!), and I really hope that ye go through with it.--Tcarr 14:46, 22 February 2006 (PST)

UPDATE!

Thanks to the generous contribution from the Mad Professor, I can give Ostreum Island away as my grand prize. (providing NF doesn't lose it over the next month) We're in business. Thanks for your recommendations, Artie, but I'll be flying solo on this one - no OM help required.

-Loose