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Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges Season 1 - Complete

PostPosted: Saturday, 11th January 2014, 09:10
by WalkerBoh
Season 1 is complete.
The Week 10 challenge, VpAE, is now closed.
The Week 9 challenge, TrAM, is now closed.
The Week 8 challenge, DEVM, is now closed.
The Week 7 challenge, TeSk, is now closed.
The Week 6 challenge, MfFi, is now closed.
The Week 5 challenge, NaEn, is now closed.
The Week 4 challenge, GhHu, is now closed.
The Week 3 challenge, DsTm, is now closed.
The Week 2 challenge, DrCK, is now closed.
The Week 1 challenge, DgCj, is now closed.

Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges is a new Crawl competition that will hopefully fill a niche somewhere between the biannual Crawl tournaments and the rarer dieselrobin events. The idea is for players to compete by trying to get the highest score in a game of Crawl with one attempt only; if you die, that challenge is over (thus "sudden death", though you may - will - often also die suddenly). This competition will be a lower time commitment event that will hopefully still challenge players, as well as encouraging different characters and play styles that you might not normally consider. I'll keep this post up-to-date with all information regarding the competition, so check back here for details.

CSDC Season 1 Results and Standings

I will try to update the standings at least once per day (usually around 9-10pm EST). You can use the bot commands on the "Rules and Information" tab of the scoring sheet to view relevant challenge information in ##crawl whenever you wish, though.

Competition Rules:
  Code:
   Format               
1   Each challenge is a randomly chosen Crawl race/class combo (e.g. HaWr).               
2   You get ONE attempt to play each combo. The goal is to get the highest in-game score possible.               
3   Players are organized by divisions. You only compete with the players in your division.               
4   New combos are selected once a week. The season lasts 10 weeks, i.e. 10 different combos per season.               
5   Additionally each challenge has an optional bonus challenge (see "Bonuses" tab for the list). Each bonus will have two tiers; the
    second tier is more difficult, and worth more points.               
6   Top 3 players in each division qualify for a one-week playoff to determine a champion. Playoff format to be announced after Week 3.               
                  
   Additional Rules               
1   Games must be played online in Trunk. Any logged server is allowable (CAO, CSZO, CLAN, CBRO, RHF).               
2   Playing the same char simultaneously on more than one server is not allowed.               
3   No races or classes that have not made it into a stable release will be eligible for challenge combos. In addition, Dithmengos
    cannot be worshipped in any challenge game (player receives 0 pts for that challenge).
4   Each challenge will be open for 2 weeks. All games must be ended before the challenge is closed in order to count.               
5   One redo is allowed if player XL < 4 (i.e., no redos once you hit XL 4). The higher of the two games counts for your score.
6   In case of a drastic change to Trunk that affects an open combo, players who completed the open combo will have the               
    option to replay it once. If replayed, the 2nd score will stand even if the 1st score is higher.               
                  
   Scoring               
   Points for winning challenges:               
1   1st place in a challenge (per division):   3 pts            
2   2nd place in a challenge (per division):   2 pts            
3   3rd place in a challenge (per division):   1 pt            
                  
   Points for in-game achievements:               
4   Won game:                                  2 pts            
5   Bonus completion*:                         1 pt for Tier I, 3 pts for Tier II            
6   # of runes (if won):                       1 pt for 3+ runes, 2 pts for 6+ runes            
7   # of runes (if not won):                   1 pt for 1+ runes, 2 pts for 10+ runes            
8   Collect a rune with xl<=12:                2 pts per game (excluding abyssal or slimy runes)   
     *note, you only get points for the highest tier bonus you complete         
                  
   Miscellaneous points:               
9   Streak win (challenge games only):         1 pt per win            
10  Season high score (per division):          3 pts            
11  Season min turn count win (per division):  3 pts            


Divisions
  Code:
Division 1 - Ereshkigal's Executioners
1. ackack
2. Bart
3. Cheibrodos
4. Implojin
5. MorganLeah
6. MrPlanck
7. nago
8. Sphara
9. Yermak

Division 2 - Mennas' Menaces
1. aspy
2. HungrySpirit
3. MDvedh
4. rast
5. TedronaiSDC
6. vengefulcarrot
7. WalkerBoh

Division 3 - Wiglaf's Warriors
1. caleba
2. Charos
3. dpeg
4. glosham
5. Lasty
6. moose
7. sanka
8. tasonir

Division 4 - Gastronok's Guerillas
1. 9to
2. Cedor
3. DracheReborn
4. Igxfl
5. inmateoo
6. magipi
7. mopl
8. wheals

Division 5 - Pikel's Punishers
1. adozu
2. chasecapener
3. fearitself
4. headcrab0803
5. HenryFlower
6. Moanerette
7. stickyfingers
8. TeshiAlair

Division X - Xom's X-Factors
1. Amilir
2. andinto
3. diviton
4. Sandman25
5. Siegurt
6. some12fat2move
7. Tiktacy
8. XuaXua

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 11th January 2014, 10:58
by nago
I'm in!


I was thinking to take a break from crawl, cause I suicided my last 3 or 4 characters able to win around d:27 by boredom - a single shot every week could be interesting.

Which version? I don't like playing trunk very much...

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 11th January 2014, 17:08
by WalkerBoh
Typically we play in trunk, but that does have problems sometimes (DjGl came up and djinn lost berserk halfway through, so some people got a little screwed). So I guess I'd prefer trunk but am open to using last stable release. You can think of it as practice for the next tournament if you don't like trunk. :)

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 11th January 2014, 22:45
by and into
I'm sure I'll be owned by better players but I'm in.

For all the reasons you listed this appeals to me a lot more than the tournaments. Great idea WalkerBoh and thanks in advance for organizing it! (And Crazy Yiuf's Colosseum is a great name, btw.)

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 11th January 2014, 23:27
by dpeg
It's a great idea! In Brogue they have weekly contest, also run by dedicated players. Of course, Brogue has the great advantage of seeds. Would be awesome if we could do that in Crawl, too.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 12th January 2014, 17:47
by WalkerBoh
Here's an example of a scoring sheet I've put together for AWBW's current challenges: AWBW Challenges.

You can also see our current rules on the Rules tab. It would be quite trivial to add in individual player statistics, like win %, # of runes collected, % of challenges won, etc.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 12th January 2014, 20:27
by sanka
I think this would be a really great idea! I generaly do not have time to bother with tournaments, but this sounds like the perfect place to play for me! Would love to see this officially.

Yes, seeds may be good but I think it would work very well without it. Better players tend to have better win rates even with much worse luck in a given game. I know because I'm not good and I tend to die with avesome equipment wihtout any particulary bad luck.And it's a game, it's nice to have some randomness, you feel you may have a chance.

Automatic scoring like in tournaments would be the best.

Uhm, and why is this in Yiuf instead of the average GDD thread?

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 12th January 2014, 21:53
by galehar
dpeg wrote:It's a great idea! In Brogue they have weekly contest, also run by dedicated players. Of course, Brogue has the great advantage of seeds. Would be awesome if we could do that in Crawl, too.

The option is there, it has been for more than 3 years, thanks to kilobyte. Although, it's been really working only for a couple of months.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 12th January 2014, 22:10
by WalkerBoh
Yeah, I also don't think seeds are necessary. Part of the great thing about Crawl is the randomness, and luck should balance out over the course of a season's-worth of challenges.

sanka wrote:Automatic scoring like in tournaments would be the best.

Indeed. I do not have the programming know-how required to fully automate (thus Excel spreadsheets, which I am very familiar with). But if it got to the point where many people were interested and it was too much to track without full automation, I would love to have a script that auto-updated everything.

sanka wrote:Uhm, and why is this in Yiuf instead of the average GDD thread?

Well it really has nothing to do with game design, so it pretty clearly didn't belong in GDD. I think Dungeon Crawling Advice is the forum that is frequented by the people who would be most interested in this, but it doesn't fit in there at all. So I Yiufed it and hoped people would see it. :)

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Monday, 13th January 2014, 06:35
by TeshiAlair
Awesome idea! I'd be in for sure.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Monday, 13th January 2014, 09:25
by MDvedh
I'm totally in!
I could also contribute some coding work for parsing morgues, but I can't host and/or maintain server for that.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Wednesday, 15th January 2014, 23:35
by Arrhythmia
I'd love to be in!

Personally, like nago, I'd prefer if it was limited to the most recent stable version so that people aren't suddenly screwed over by changes. If it isn't, no biggy.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 00:01
by Moanerette
I'd be up for this as well; stable or trunk, I don't mind.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 01:03
by WalkerBoh
Awesome, I'd say we definitely have enough interest to put together a good competition then. :)

I don't have time tonight, but tomorrow I'll put up a more complete list of rules. I'll also try to prepare some scoring sheets templates (and if someone wants to help me with setting up some Sequell commands for automated querying of scores, please message me in ##crawl).

I'll plan on just using this thread to organize the challenge, since it's already here. I'll keep all of the relevant information in the first post, so check there for the most updated info.

Edit: Oh, and if you use a different name or names to play games, please let me know what it is!

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 10:50
by Cedor
I'm in (such competition need bad players).

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 11:23
by stickyfingers
If the limit for bad players in this isn't yet met then I'd like to be in as well.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 16:22
by WalkerBoh
The more the merrier. And hey, this competition is even guaranteed to turn bad players into good ones or your money back!

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 16:25
by Tiktacy
Shut up and take my yes.

(Count me in!)

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 17:50
by Hirsch I
I'm in.
Thou shalt behold the epitome of badness.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 19:08
by Magipi
I'd like to join in as well.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 19:22
by wheals
I'd be willing to try this out.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 19:53
by Igxfl
I'm in.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 20:22
by MDvedh
Please add HungrySpirit in the list too, he hasn't account on forums.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Thursday, 16th January 2014, 20:25
by HenryFlower
I'm in, for a 100% death rate (but death is always one to a customer)

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Friday, 17th January 2014, 03:44
by tasonir
I'd love to try this, and furthermore only saw it because of the new dart board, so thanks for the dart board subforum!

Sign me up, I may even win once. How do you enforce the try the combo only once part?

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Friday, 17th January 2014, 05:10
by WalkerBoh
Well I promised a more complete set of rules tonight, so I updated the first post with more details. I'm open to tweaking the rules if there are some aspects the majority of people would rather see changed, so feel free to post any comments. For example, I wouldn't mind feedback on whether you guys like...
Spoiler: show
- Playing trunk only. I think most players play in trunk (correct me if I'm wrong), and I don't really see any way that it could work to let players choose if they want to play the latest stable release or trunk. They're just too different, and I don't want to force people to analyze the differences between versions to figure out which one is better for a particular challenge.

- 2 week window to play each combo. I considered leaving each combo open for the duration of the season, but I don't think it's reasonable to do so if we're playing trunk only. I feel that a 2-week window is enough time for people to finish a game (even if you're busy and the game stretches out through 15 runes). I also want to discourage people waiting for weeks to see how other players are doing in challenges before playing any of their games; that would take a lot of fun out of the competition aspect.

- Splitting players into divisions. This is mostly because I want this competition to be fun for all players. I don't really want to force players to have to win games to earn any points, and without divisions I'm afraid that the top players will be the only ones with points. So I think splitting into smaller groups will allow people to enjoy the competition aspect more, rather than just playing the challenges for the sake of playing the challenges.

- Redo policy. This is something we implemented at AWBW after a while. The early part of the game is when you're most susceptible to a death that you couldn't prevent (D:2 centaur anyone? D:1 kobold with elec dagger? I think we've all been there…), and it really sucks when your challenge ends almost immediately to something that wasn't your fault. It's unlikely that you're robbed twice in a row, so allowing a person to have one redo helps mitigate unfortunate RNG deaths. At first we used only score < X, but that discourages you from picking up gold in the early game, which is unintuitive and gamey. So I think {sc-gold}<=50 will prevent some of those early D:1 and D:2 deaths without allowing a player to get too far and get a free redo for their own mistakes. I might move that number up a bit, to 60 or so too.

- Scoring system. First, I don't want scoring points to be dependent on winning games, but winning your game should give you a nice bonus. The maximum score you can get from one game (not including streak wins or the season high score/min turn count win) is 10 points (challenge win + won game + optional bonus + 6 or more runes). If you don't win your game, the max you can get is 5 (challenge win + 10 or more runes). I added in runes to disincentivize people waiting to play their game to see what the other players did (for example, waiting to see if player A wins with 3 runes so you can go for 4 and win the challenge). This way, if you go for 6 runes and win, and someone then beats your score, you still get some points for your extra effort. Similarly, I added the if-not-won rune points for a) players who have trouble winning, and b) to reward players with some points if they try to go big and fail. I do not, however, want to encourage players to have to get all 15 runes to get max points, because I know many people do not care much for doing extended (and are justified in that opinion, I think). You are already somewhat incentivized to go for 15 if you want to make it harder for people to beat your score, but I don't see any way around this short of coming up with a completely different scoring system for each game that isn't based on how Crawl already scores it.


I plan to leave signups open through Friday, 1/27/14, while I put together some of the scoring sheets and queries and such. After that, I'll set the divisions and plan on starting the competition on Monday, 1/30/14.

tasonir wrote:How do you enforce the try the combo only once part?

Basically I'll only count the score of the first game a person plays with the challenge combo after that challenge starts. So if the combo is HaWr and starts on 2/2/14, your first game with HaWr after 2/2/14 is what I'll use for your score. It shouldn't be hard at all to do this with Sequell in ##crawl. So you don't have to worry about submitting your score either, I'll take care of updating everyone's scores once or twice a day.

Edit: Edited the post a bit to explain my reasoning behind the current rules, sorry for the long read so I spoilered it.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Friday, 17th January 2014, 05:55
by Siegurt
Sign me up, I'm interested.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Friday, 17th January 2014, 08:46
by Sphara
Count me in.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Friday, 17th January 2014, 09:58
by nago
I like the rules (except trunk only :D, it adds some big randomness to game's balance ) but I think longer streak should be rewarded more, because the odds are against (I think it's more difficult to get a 3 wins streak rather than two 2 wins one).
What about using a linear progression to increase their value? So, e.g. for a 4 streak, the 2nd victory counts 1 bonus point, the 3rd 2 points, and the 4th 3 point (total 6 instead of 3).

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Friday, 17th January 2014, 14:23
by Charos
Count me in too. Gotta try this 8-)

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Friday, 17th January 2014, 15:13
by MDvedh
Add inmateoo too, he hasn't account on forums either :)

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Friday, 17th January 2014, 17:58
by TeshiAlair
I'm in as well!

Only suggestion I would make is instead of one game, have the first 3 games of that combo count, to prevent insane RNG frustration.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Friday, 17th January 2014, 19:59
by WalkerBoh
Glad so many people are interested! At this rate we might have enough for 4-5 divisions. :)

@nago: With regards to streaks, here is my thinking:
- The challenges already essentially encourage streaking. Since you get just one try, you are basically already playing each game as if it was a streak.
- Because of this pressure to do well in each game, an important aspect is rewarding risk-taking. This is accomplished partially because less turns to win = more risk = higher score = better chance of winning challenge. By rewarding streaks more, it encourages slower and more cautious play.
- Emphasis on bonus challenges is also important, since they will really make the games fun for the better players. Essentially I always want the reward for trying the bonus to be higher than the reward for just streaking. The safer option should be lower points.
- Finally, streaks are arbitrary. I don't want a player who wins 7 in a row and a player who wins 7 with 2 losses in the middle to have substantially different scores.

@TeshiAlair: I think a single redo in the early game is enough. After the first couple levels, generally you have enough tools and have made enough decisions that deaths are almost never truly unavoidable. Maybe for the lower divisions, we could tweak this rule though.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 18th January 2014, 00:14
by Arrhythmia
Like nago said, I don't think playing in trunk is a particularly good idea. I'd be pretty cheesed if my DjBe lost the ability to berserk, or my MuWz gained it. Or what if they add a new enemy or vault that is an untested murder trap? Or a unique who has 55 HD instead of 5 because of a typo? If we stick to .13, we at least can know all the big threats in advance.

e: If you're looking for ideas for divisions, I think "hasn't won online", "has won once online", "goodplayer", and "greatplayer" would all be good distinctions. The biggest problem I can think of is that it would rank people used to offline lower than they play at, but I don't really see any other way of doing it than self reporting.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 18th January 2014, 00:47
by Siegurt
FWIW I play about 95% of my games offline, I'm not sure how I would rate myself, since most of my games I play for "interesting" rather than "most likely to win"

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 18th January 2014, 05:52
by crate
I'm not playing but personally I find .13 unplayable at this point. The monster summoning change alone is enough to make that the case for me.

Additionally you can't berserk with DjBe in .13 either!

I don't find that trunk actually has changes that noticeably affect how easy or hard crawl is very often, and many of the ones it does have affect specifically things that are new (e.g. new races like dj) that you wouldn't choose in the first place for something like this. Personally I wouldn't even find something like cleaving to be that much of a game-changer, but you can disagree with me there.

Just figured I'd throw this out there.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 18th January 2014, 06:21
by diviton
I'd like to do this

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 18th January 2014, 06:56
by WalkerBoh
Arryhythmia wrote:Like nago said, I don't think playing in trunk is a particularly good idea. I'd be pretty cheesed if my DjBe lost the ability to berserk, or my MuWz gained it. Or what if they add a new enemy or vault that is an untested murder trap? Or a unique who has 55 HD instead of 5 because of a typo? If we stick to .13, we at least can know all the big threats in advance.

Right, I agree with you that the risk of playing trunk is its potential volatility with regards to design. That's why I added:
4. Because trunk can have sudden changes, if a change is made that drastically affects the playability of one of the open chars, players who have already played the char will have the option to replay the combo once before it closes. (I get to decide what constitutes a drastic effect on playability.)

Do you think this rule is not sufficient? To give an example… let's say you have a game in progress and Dithmengos is pushed to trunk halfway through your game (which IMO is a significant change). Then I would give you the option to replay the challenge one time after your in-progress game is done (no time extension though, the challenge is still closed after 2 weeks). So if you think Dithmengos would have helped your game a lot, you can retry the game. If you're happy with the score you got, you keep your score. Note that if you choose to redo, your first game's score is gone; whatever you get in the redo will be your score regardless of whether it is higher than the first score or not.

So in the case where a change is made halfway through that would have helped your character significantly, you would generally take the redo unless you did really well anyways. In the case where the change hurts your character (e.g. DjBe losing berserk), you could avoid this by not updating your game to the current version of trunk. I will always try to make it clear as soon as possible if I think a change has been made that is redo-worthy. I will also make sure not to choose newly added races or classes as combos, because (as crate hinted at) they are much more likely to undergo radical changes than other features.

As for just playing stable release, crate summed up my thoughts pretty nicely. I understand that some people may not like changes added to the game in trunk (rune lock and Forest perhaps being the most obvious items), but overall I feel the game gets better as time goes on and does not get significantly easier or harder from version to version (just my opinion here). If you strongly dislike trunk because you feel the additions/removals from the last stable release to trunk overall worsen your experience of crawl, this is maybe not the best competition for you. :( But the volatility of trunk is an issue I believe can be mitigated successfully.

All that being said (and sorry for being so long-winded! I just want to fully explain my thoughts so you all know where I'm coming from), if there is a group of players who really want to participate in challenges and REALLY don't want to play trunk, I would be open to creating a division for stable release only. In the end, I want to create a challenge that is the most fun for the largest number of people, after all. :)

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

Arryhythmia wrote:e: If you're looking for ideas for divisions, I think "hasn't won online", "has won once online", "goodplayer", and "greatplayer" would all be good distinctions. The biggest problem I can think of is that it would rank people used to offline lower than they play at, but I don't really see any other way of doing it than self reporting.

Good idea! I was thinking something along these lines, too, but it will be hard to say how grouping will fall out until we know who and how many players sign up. As far as offline players, for my purposes I have to assume that offline games don't exist. The groupings don't need to be perfect anyways though, I think having one or two players wrongly placed (+/- 1 division) should not affect the enjoyment of the competition for others too much.

But just so everyone knows, I will be only gauging your skill based on the profile with the name you used to sign up with. If you feel that account doesn't accurately represent your skill at all, just send me a PM and explain to me why. This will help me a lot when creating the divisions.

And thank you all for the feedback so far. :)

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 18th January 2014, 10:27
by A spy
This looks really cool, I'd be interested in participating! ( aspy on CDO )

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 18th January 2014, 20:40
by sanka
OFF:
crate wrote:I'm not playing but personally I find .13 unplayable at this point. The monster summoning change alone is enough to make that the case for me.


I'd really like to hear some more about this if it's not a big question: what feature do you refer and why is it so awful? And is this supposedly awful feature is reverted/changed in trunk?

ON:

I like trunk, the only think I would add is to remove experimental races. Particulary Lava Orc and Djinni seems to be so vague that they may undergoe big changes any time sombody has a good idea, so I would not like to play with them on a tournament (yet).

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 18th January 2014, 21:54
by duvessa
In 0.14 monster summons die if you kill the summoner. This makes summoning monsters much less terribly designed and more fun to fight. And 0.12/0.13 added a bunch more summoning monsters to the game so the terrible design of pre-0.14 monster summoners was much more noticeable than it was in, say, 0.10.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 18th January 2014, 22:11
by WalkerBoh
sanka wrote:I like trunk, the only think I would add is to remove experimental races. Particulary Lava Orc and Djinni seems to be so vague that they may undergoe big changes any time sombody has a good idea, so I would not like to play with them on a tournament (yet).

Yes, exactly. Any race (or class if a new one is added) that hasn't made it into a stable release will not be a candidate for the challenges.

Re: Crawl Challenges

PostPosted: Saturday, 18th January 2014, 22:57
by Arrhythmia
WalkerBoh wrote:Yes, exactly. Any race (or class if a new one is added) that hasn't made it into a stable release will not be a candidate for the challenges.


This is a much better idea than restricting it to .13. Good thinking!

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 19th January 2014, 04:33
by WalkerBoh
A couple updates:

1) Added to the Rules that no "unstable" races or classes will be selected as challenge combos.
2) Added an additional season-long bonus challenge: Collect a rune with xl<=12 for 2 pts per game (excluding slimy and abyssal).
3) Added a bit of flavor and a better name for the challenges: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges. It differentiates it a bit from other types of Crawl challenges, namely that you only get one chance at each char, and I think "sudden death" is a fitting description - in more ways than one. :) For perspective, the other two options were "The Crawl-osseum" and "Yiuf's YOLO Mania!!!". You're welcome.

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 19th January 2014, 10:05
by MDvedh
I would call it "Tavern Freak Show" because you know, there are some freaks like DEGl and MfFE and there are tavern users.

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 19th January 2014, 13:56
by dpeg
Count me in!

WalkerBoh: Thanks for setting this up, it's great to see.

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 19th January 2014, 14:26
by njvack
I'm in for at least an occasional shot. #badplayers ho!

Also, I definitely support the idea of seeding it, assuming this means everyone will get the same dungeon... it's the Spelunky daily challenge, then, except in Crawl.

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 19th January 2014, 14:27
by Moanerette
Another way to sort players into divisions could be by average score.

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 19th January 2014, 21:44
by WalkerBoh
Also, I definitely support the idea of seeding it, assuming this means everyone will get the same dungeon... it's the Spelunky daily challenge, then, except in Crawl.

I think if we were going to make this official or super serious/competitive, seeds would be needed. Since it's casual, I personally think it's more fun for each player to find different loot, build their chars in different ways, etc. In the end, player skill will still have the largest effect on results.

Another way to sort players into divisions could be by average score.

I'm using an amalgam of # of wins, win rate, % of games with # of runes > 0, and avg # of runes per game. Oh and max streak length.

Re: Crawl "Sudden Death" Challenges

PostPosted: Sunday, 19th January 2014, 21:47
by crate
If you were making this serious then having the same seed is not necessarily a benefit--a player could gain an advantage by simply waiting to view a competitor's ttyrec (to learn the dungeon) before playing. In my opinion this is actually a much bigger deal than the randomness of having different dungeons.

Of course you can mitigate this by accepting multiple entries from each player, or by having some non-competing player play through with the seed beforehand and basically publicizing the dungeon. However in all of these cases the game you are actually competing in is not recognizably crawl, since there is so much extra information the player already has (and in fact for good players winning should be effectively a 100% chance with this much knowledge of the dungeon).