Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges Season 1 - Complete


Official tournaments, but also any competition, challenge of the week or other player initiative for competitive crawling.

Zot Zealot

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Post Wednesday, 2nd April 2014, 17:54

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Week 10 Has Begun

Still in trunk!

Tartarus Sorceror

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Post Monday, 7th April 2014, 07:49

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Week 10 Has Begun

So even though I did horribly, here are my suggestions for the next one:

- Get rid of divisions.
- Make signups optional -- if you play a chosen combo during its window, you're automatically participating in the CSDC.
- Make the first few weeks last extra-long so latecomers have a better chance at fully participating.
- .14 instead of trunk so we don't have issues with changes and bugs affecting games.

The CSDC scoring system has turned into a sort of example of the http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inner-platform_effect . Crawl already has a decent score system, so use that and add fixed amounts for bonuses, ranging from maybe 0.5M for the easiest tier I to 5M for the hardest tier II. Your overall score is the sum of your weekly scores.

Zot Zealot

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Post Monday, 7th April 2014, 14:53

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Week 10 Has Begun

Rast wrote:- Get rid of divisions.
- Make signups optional -- if you play a chosen combo during its window, you're automatically participating in the CSDC.
- Make the first few weeks last extra-long so latecomers have a better chance at fully participating.
- .14 instead of trunk so we don't have issues with changes and bugs affecting games.

Well I don't want to entirely get rid of divisions, but I am planning on having less of them next season (2-3 depending on # of participants) with more players per division.

No signups does indeed solve the issue of people dropping out, but it's a nightmare for me to track and necessitates removing divisions. I would need much more advanced score-keeping to even make it viable though.

Making the first few weeks last longer is a step in the right direction. But I have a better idea I think for solving that problem.

0.14 only is very likely out of the question.

Rast wrote: Crawl already has a decent score system, so use that...

I disagree. Your system places huge value on 15-runes and speedrunning, which I do not want to make necessary. The correct solution is not to tie the CSDC score more directly to in-game score than currently, but rather to entirely separate it from in-game score. This is what I plan for next season (i.e, no more points for first, second, third each week).

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Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Monday, 7th April 2014, 15:02

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Week 10 Has Begun

As this format grows in popularity, and evolves, I'm hoping that a couple things might happen:

1) Event hooks can be added to the game to make it easier to programatically parse events and games (if even necessary).
2) Some programmer will step up to automate the crawling of this information, and make a meaningful set of webpages out of the data with automatic intraday updates. The release tournaments do a real good job of this, and I'm sure something similar can be done for the CSDC games.

I would be willing to help with #2 possibly depending on how difficult it is.

Zot Zealot

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Post Monday, 7th April 2014, 15:58

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Week 10 Has Begun

Both of those would be amazing. For #2, it's outside of my expertise, but if anyone would like to volunteer, please send me a message so we can talk about it!

Zot Zealot

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 02:58

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Sorry everyone for not putting up a formal announcement ending Season 1 of the CSDC. I got a little wrapped up with the tournament. :)

Anyways, I just want to say a big thank you to everyone who made the inaugural season a lot of fun. I'm glad so many people enjoyed playing the games, and I'm especially grateful to everyone who took the time to give feedback on the format and competition. And a big congratulations to our division winners!

Division 1 Champion - Bart
Division 2 Champion - Tedronai
Division 3 Champion - Lasty
Division 4 Champion - DracheReborn
Division 5 Champions- stickyfingers and fearitself
Division X Champion- Sandman25

Take a bow, you guys earned it. :D

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

An update on Season 2:

Overall I think the first season was successful enough to merit running it back for an even better Season 2! As I mentioned a few weeks ago, I will be making some tweaks to the format/rules to address some of the issues from last season. I'll try to put up a new format and set of rules for Season 2 by the end of this week - expect something around Saturday or Sunday.

At the same time, I'll open "signups" to gauge interest on who would like to play in Season 2. I'll leave signups open for at least 2-3 weeks; for one thing, I want to give people a couple weeks to recover from post-tourney burnout (I know I need a little break at least!), and I also am working with Lasty, who has generously volunteered to help me create a more automated scoring sheet. Anyways, I am tentatively looking at a start date for Season 2 around the end of May.

As always, please feel free to message me or post here with any input/comments you have about things you liked or disliked about Season 1. And if you have any ideas for ways to make Season 2 even more awesome, I'd love to hear those too. Thanks again everyone!

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and into, DracheReborn, HenryFlower, Lasty, Sandman25, stickyfingers, Tedronai, XuaXua

Abyss Ambulator

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 12:47

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Just wanted to give a big thanks for putting this all together!

As far as scoring goes, I think doing something simple and custom would be best, perhaps based on XL, DL, #Runes, #Type Runes, branches explored, uniques killed. These are all things that would get factored in already, but with a little less of the automagical element.
Three wins: Gargoyle Earth Elementalist of Ash, Ogre Fighter of Ru, Deep Dwarf Fighter of Makhleb (0.16 bugbuild :( )
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 14:19

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Unless you're posting a signups thread for season 2 and haven't yet linked it to the end of this thread, consider this my !signup ! :-)
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Zot Zealot

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 15:31

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

I'll post a new thread for season 2 this weekend, but I'll throw you on it when I do.

Vaults Vanquisher

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 16:46

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Very excited about S2... sad that I have to wait until the weekend!
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Tuesday, 29th April 2014, 17:55

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

WalkerBoh wrote:I'll post a new thread for season 2 this weekend, but I'll throw you on it when I do.


Awesome; I'll try to land properly.
"Be aware that a lot of people on this forum, such as mageykun and XuaXua, have a habit of making things up." - minmay a.k.a. duvessa
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Totally gracious CSDC Season 2 Division 4 Champeen!

Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 12:59

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Sign me up for season 2. This is easily my favorite challenge.

Some thoughts about sudden death tournament.

1. In case it should come up, I want to do a preemptive lobby against including points for "first to do X", as is the case in the tournament. I have limited play time and the sudden first death format was perfect for such constraints.

2. I do wonder if it would make it more appealing to give points for a win and eliminate points for score. The extended game can be a good challenge every now and then, but it is not a very pleasant gaming experience in a multiple round format.

3. I thought that the divisions made sense. There was a suggestion to eliminate them, but I think doing so could decrease participation. For example, I am happy to be in the same division as Bart, but will never be that good. How do you reliably get people with no wins to participate if they know from the start that they will be facing Bart-level competition? There is a competitive element to the challenge (which is good), but you want to think you have a chance to compete.

4. Perhaps 5-6 rounds, same format as before, instead of 10. I think it would be good to end the challenge with people thinking they would like to see it continue, than end it with people feeling burnt out.

5. How about true sudden death? No second chances.

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 13:26

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

5. How about true sudden death? No second chances.


I am not sure about that, for some combos it would be too much luck-dependent IMHO. Yesterday my MuWz died twice in a row to a single Jackal (2nd and 3rd monster correspondingly), 17% Magic Dart is weird. So maybe it can be set based of combo power, no second chance for TrXX, for example.
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Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 14:03

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

I think XL 4 was a good compromise. The early game can have big variances in difficulty. Sudden death should punish you for your own mistakes and not for having an elec dagger kobold lurking behind some corner on D:1.

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 14:06

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Sandman25 wrote:So maybe it can be set based of combo power, no second chance for TrXX, for example.


But that is absolutely counterproductive. No matter how strong the combo is, you can still die early because of extreme bad luck (hobgoblin with elec or draining dagger or something similar). Why punish someone who is very unlucky?

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 14:14

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

MrPlanck wrote:5. How about true sudden death? No second chances.


Why? If you check the results, only 7 participants had more than 2 wins. This does not suggest that the challenges were too easy.

Also, I would love to see more of the "easier" combos. No more CK or similar nonsense.

Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 16:28

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Magipi wrote:
MrPlanck wrote:5. How about true sudden death? No second chances.


Why? If you check the results, only 7 participants had more than 2 wins. This does not suggest that the challenges were too easy.

Also, I would love to see more of the "easier" combos. No more CK or similar nonsense.


This is a problem with running a contest that's supposed to appeal to basically all skill levels. For less experienced players, even the easy combos are still pretty hard and getting runes or winning is already going to be a good enough metric. At the top level, I would imagine there are many combos that essentially everybody should be able to win. For those players, having some nastier combos show up randomly is better in terms of getting clear results from the tournament.

Similarly, while I agree with MrPlanck that 15 runers get exhausting (my two splats in this tournament basically came out of impatience associated with that type of effect), I also think that you need to have more going on as a scoring mechanism than just winning. Coming up with a good solution to that is tough, but qualitatively I think what I'd like to see is a system that satisfies these vaguely specified goals:

--- an average 3 rune game is worth less than an average 15 rune game
--- an average 15 rune game is worth less than an exceptional 3 rune game

A crude measure of "exceptional" could be how many standard deviations your turn count is away from winning games for that race with the same number of unique runes. This could then give you some sort of multiplier or exponent that you could use to correct scores.

EDIT: this scoring system would obviously be more opaque than the existing one, but it's unclear whether that's actually a disadvantage. It might help mitigate some of the effect where you stall on your game to see how other people in your division do before deciding how far/hard you want to push.

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 16:54

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

ackack wrote:At the top level, I would imagine there are many combos that essentially everybody should be able to win.


The actual results do not back up this statement. Take DEVM (a relatively "easy" combo): only 6 wins. In the top 2 divisions: 2 wins, 2 games with runes, 8 splats.

TrAM, an even easier combo: only 7 wins total. In the top 2 divisions: 5 wins, 1 game with runes, 5 splats.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 17:00

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Magipi wrote:
ackack wrote:At the top level, I would imagine there are many combos that essentially everybody should be able to win.


The actual results do not back up this statement. Take DEVM (a relatively "easy" combo): only 6 wins. In the top 2 divisions: 2 wins, 2 games with runes, 8 splats.

TrAM, an even easier combo: only 7 wins total. In the top 2 divisions: 5 wins, 1 game with runes, 5 splats.


Some of the deaths were caused by going for bonuses.

Cocytus Succeeder

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 17:13

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Sandman25 wrote:
Magipi wrote:
ackack wrote:At the top level, I would imagine there are many combos that essentially everybody should be able to win.


The actual results do not back up this statement. Take DEVM (a relatively "easy" combo): only 6 wins. In the top 2 divisions: 2 wins, 2 games with runes, 8 splats.

TrAM, an even easier combo: only 7 wins total. In the top 2 divisions: 5 wins, 1 game with runes, 5 splats.


Some of the deaths were caused by going for bonuses.


Yes, absolutely. So there should be easy combos and crazy bonus challenges.
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Slime Squisher

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 18:41

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

This competition forced you to go extended. I don't see anything wrong with that. What I would change would be the diffenrence in points between winning with 6 runes and 15 runes. Maybe one point for every 3rd rune in a winning game could be somewhat good. Also getting rune XL<12 has to be removed. Very few players will go for that. If it has to be sustained, it needs to be acknowledged more in terms of challenge points. And no changing of rules during the challenge anymore, please. It was the first Challenge Competition of course and I enjoyed it but I was kinda disappointed when I heard no sudden death round would be played.
(not that I could have beaten Bart no matter what the SD combo would have been) :D

Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 19:11

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Sphara wrote:This competition forced you to go extended. I don't see anything wrong with that. What I would change would be the diffenrence in points between winning with 6 runes and 15 runes. Maybe one point for every 3rd rune in a winning game could be somewhat good.


Nothing is intrinsically wrong with it. It's just that some people (and I am definitely one of them) find doing all of that extended kinda tiresome. My impression from ##crawl is that this sentiment is more common than not among the type of players who would populate the top division of this sort of tournament.

Given that, I don't really like your suggestion as it makes doing 15 runes (which most of the time isn't appreciably harder than 3 or 6, just longer) much more of a necessity than it already was. With the season 1 scoring framework, you could stop if you were already in good position compared to your division because there were no extra points to get. With a scoring system like what you describe, even in that situation you would still want to 15 rune every time it was possible just to pick up the extra points.

EDIT: and to be clear, if most people participating in this tournament want it to be all extended, all the time, then that's fine. I'm just throwing out my thoughts based on how I felt about the first season.

Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 19:56

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Tedronai wrote:I think XL 4 was a good compromise. The early game can have big variances in difficulty. Sudden death should punish you for your own mistakes and not for having an elec dagger kobold lurking behind some corner on D:1.


I think so too, just a thought. Another possibility is to vary by division. I'd be happy to play in a division that was truly sudden death.
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Shoals Surfer

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 20:08

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

ackack wrote:and to be clear, if most people participating in this tournament want it to be all extended, all the time, then that's fine. I'm just throwing out my thoughts based on how I felt about the first season.

Given the format of CSDC, extended is pretty much a non-factor for every division except of division 1. I don't think there will be much of a discussion here...

My take on it:
Perhaps we need additional ways of scoring points. So you'd face decisions like: I could score points by getting this weeks highscore (meaning going extended) or I could get extra points by winning in under 30k turns. The latter being a hypothetical fixed challenge. Just provide ways for people to score additional points without having to go to extended. The challenge here is to make it mutually exclusive with the other alternatives. Otherwise it just propagates doing it all combined.

Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Wednesday, 30th April 2014, 20:37

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

MrPlanck wrote:
Tedronai wrote:I think XL 4 was a good compromise. The early game can have big variances in difficulty. Sudden death should punish you for your own mistakes and not for having an elec dagger kobold lurking behind some corner on D:1.


I think so too, just a thought. Another possibility is to vary by division. I'd be happy to play in a division that was truly sudden death.


Maybe give a bonus point if player warns in advance that he will play current round with true sudden death. All in :)
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Ziggurat Zagger

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Post Thursday, 1st May 2014, 02:12

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Bonus points if your round-qualifying ghost kills someone in the tournament; bonus points if you kill someone in the tournaments ghost from that round. .
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Zot Zealot

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Post Thursday, 1st May 2014, 07:46

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Thanks for the feedback, guys. Some quick thoughts from me (that has somehow turned into a massive wall of text... sorry about that):

ackack wrote:I also think that you need to have more going on as a scoring mechanism than just winning. Coming up with a good solution to that is tough, but qualitatively I think what I'd like to see is a system that satisfies these vaguely specified goals:

--- an average 3 rune game is worth less than an average 15 rune game
--- an average 15 rune game is worth less than an exceptional 3 rune game

Agreed! This is quite a nice way of putting it, I think. I don't like your exact suggestion for standard deviations, as it seems hard to define in practice; I prefer to define exceptional by conduct and turn count. For the CSDC games, the conduct is completing bonuses. So in my scoring system, I am trying to make a 15-rune win worth more than a 3-rune win on average; but an exceptional 3-rune win (one with a good turn count and/or that completes a bonus) is worth more than a 15-rune win. And of course, an exceptional 15-rune win is worth the most of all! I think you will find that I have accomplished this quite nicely with the updated scoring system (which I should be able to release tomorrow!).

Of course there are also other goals that the scoring system must meet. For instance, for players who are barely capable of collecting runes, you need the scoring system to be able to make meaningful differences between them. I think I have accomplished this quite nicely, too. But it will be much easier to discuss once I release the specifics of my updated system.


Sphara wrote:This competition forced you to go extended. I don't see anything wrong with that. What I would change would be the diffenrence in points between winning with 6 runes and 15 runes. Maybe one point for every 3rd rune in a winning game could be somewhat good.

This could absolutely work, but I would prefer to stay away from it for this competition. I think it is enough to make a significant differentiation between a player who completes a 15-runer at some point during the season and a player who does not.


Sphara wrote:And no changing of rules during the challenge anymore, please. It was the first Challenge Competition of course and I enjoyed it but I was kinda disappointed when I heard no sudden death round would be played.

Yes you're absolutely right, I'm really sorry about this. I could make any number of excuses, but in truth I was probably just unprepared as an organizer. The number of players, dropouts, volatility of trunk... there were many things I did not plan for originally that were a bit overwhelming to sort through mid-season. I think this season will go much more smoothly with that experience under my belt. And you will definitely get your playoff this season! :)


ackack wrote:EDIT: and to be clear, if most people participating in this tournament want it to be all extended, all the time, then that's fine. I'm just throwing out my thoughts based on how I felt about the first season.

Pffff, what do you think this is, a democracy? Around here, what I say goes! But, uh, I value all of your opinions greatly. :P


Tedronai wrote:Just provide ways for people to score additional points without having to go to extended. The challenge here is to make it mutually exclusive with the other alternatives. Otherwise it just propagates doing it all combined.

This is the intent of the bonuses, though it didn't work as well as it could've last season. I don't know if the extra points need to be mutually exclusive; I think it is enough to balance the risk vs. the reward. For example, do I try to make it to Depths:5 before Lair for the extra bonus points, or do I play it safe and go for the more secure points for just winning? Often in Season 1, the bonus was either too easy or too hard and the wins were worth too many points to make this an interesting decision. I am confident I can improve on this in Season 2.

Sandman25 wrote:Maybe give a bonus point if player warns in advance that he will play current round with true sudden death. All in

I thought long and hard on this, actually. My solution was to give a player 1 point just for completing the challenge, and removing that point if they used their redo. But in the end, I decided against it. I don't want to penalize players for bad luck - that is the sole purpose of the redo. Sure, most players probably die early as the result of poor play rather than bad luck, and it is definitely more impressive to not need the redo. But to me it is worse to penalize players who got legitimately screwed (D2 centaur with dispersal arrows, anyone?) than to give players a second chance after bad play.

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Post Thursday, 1st May 2014, 17:50

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

It sounds like you've already got the scoring system settled, but for what it's worth, I'd prefer it if going 15 runes every week wasn't intrinsically worth more points. Perhaps you would only get extra points for your first 1-3 15 rune wins during the season. On the other hand, I also don't particularly want to have speed be a primary index of scoring either, since I prefer taking my time.

The aspects of the challenge that I find most compelling are the challenges and only getting one try, so I'd like to see the majority of the points be based on survival and meeting challenge conditions.

On the other hand, I'll probably just play however I want even if the incentives don't reward it. :D

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Post Thursday, 1st May 2014, 19:00

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges - Season 1 Complete

Sorry if my wording wasn't clear above. In season 2 you will get points one time per season for doing a 15-runer. Doing it twice gives no extra points, other than going for the season high score.

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