Tournaments (in Changelog)

I said I'd post something by the end of the month, so here it is.

Unfortunately I still haven't decided how tournaments should work in cb2, so there's rather less to see here than planned. But, I do think now that it's possible to make tournaments work here.

Some of you may have noticed that I've accepted Almuric's offer to help work on the code. If this works out, it will make him the 3rd person to work on the CB code. (Private worked on making CB phone-accessible for a couple weeks, but he sort of ran out of steam.)

As long as I'm setting up a development server for Al, if anyone else wants to help improve things (ajax? wiki images? I just don't have time for everything anymore... working for a startup can be like that), drop me a chatmail. SQL knowledge required; I can answer TCL questions, but I'm not teaching databases 101. :)

All I can say: WOW. About time.

Cheer for Almuric.

I will gladly help. As if I haven't already.. (I did submit the Other option in training page)

I can lend a hand, where a hand is needed.

Holy crap, Private was working on making CB phone-accessible? using Asterisk? Amazing..

that's phone as in smartphone :)

Works on a treo.

treos are pretty beefy as phones go; a lot can only do xhtml and have even worse resolution. that's what he was targeting.

I see, but with the beef behind treos, and the success of them based off the ability to use the internet, wouldn't companies adopt the software?

The hardware is beefy too.

Not really.

Compared to what's running in the bulk of cell phones it is.

I wonder if the abuse seen on cb1 tourneys will continue here

what abuse?

Alas I cannot help on this part but I can say that it's wonderful to see big additions to CB2 are being made :)

the bulk of cellphones are not considered smart phones either

I emailed the people who chatmailed me about helping.

So if you don't actually use the email address in your profile anymore, now would be a good time to fix that. :)

What is the CB tournament.

On CB1, there are tournaments.

Basically, instead of creating a regular character, you could create a tournament character. Each week there was a tournament that lasted exactly one week. A tournament character can fight any character but can only be attacked by other tournament characters.

Originally, the highest score or pr was taken as the winning condition and you won a prize. Eventually, there was limited amount of BA allowed for some tournaments and victory conditions were changed to make tournaments more fun and varied.

When a tournament was over, your tournament character was retired. It could never become a regular character. You could, however, transfer all your money and equipment off of him and onto one of your other characters. Tourney characters gained XP and $ a lot faster than other characters, so you could make a pretty penny in a week of tourney playing.

There's a lot more detail, but the above should give you the gist.

Well I'm not sure I would join in on a Tourney.. I'd hate to lose a weeks worth of exp on my main character. Now if at the end of the week, all exp earned on the Tourney character could be totaled up and split up evenly on my main character, I could see doing this.
Basically, you won't see many of the top 15 players and those dedicated to developing their main character participate in these, which is kinda defeating the purpose if you want to claim to be the best in tournaments, then wouldn't you want to play against the top people from a ground zero position to test your wits vs theirs?

I am thrilled about this change! Can't wait to see how they're implemented! And Mikel... I guess if those near the top don't feel confident enough to join a short tournament and try fighting from the bottom again, we'd all understand that. ^.~

tourneys are a great way that those of us with nothing to play for at the moment can play for something again

Mikel, sometimes the prizes are huge. couple that with the money you can make in a tourney, and they become worth playing.

Well I agree with Mikel a weeks worth of lost growth on my main might not justify some cash gain if you have 10 people gain on you during that time.

Also, at least on CB1, a lot of top strategists would take the week out for tourneys. I never did, but then I was never one of the top strategists.

Basically, by looking at folks who play tourneys, you can see who was depending on massive BA usages as their main tactic and those who generally had more clever designs. At least that is how it played out for me. Believe me, tournaments end up being plenty competitive.

BA usage is the main part of every strat.

Did you miss the word "massive"? My only strategy, ever, has been that I use more BA than others. Any other breakthroughs have generally been copying the greats. That is what I was referring to. I was trying to tip my hat to the folks who are tactical geniuses and can be competitive without setting their alarm clocks every three hours. *smile* But never mind -- apparently my point got lost in there.

The point is not missed, it just doesn't make sense.

Massive or not, BA usage makes *every* strat win or lose.

Setting the alarm clock to use every BA you can, well that makes you off kilter and slightly insane.

If you don't get it, you can say you just don't get it. Don't tell me my point makes no sense.

Great strat with moderate BA usage = Less than great strat with more BA usage.

Do you disagree? If so, you are incorrect. It is simple math.

I was saying I depended on (and still do, for the most part) the right side of the equation more than the left, and I greatly respect those who utilize the left. Just about everyone in the game cares more about (and works harder) on strategy and efficiency than I do.

Don't worry, I won't try to make a compliment again, at least not on your watch.

I didn't miss the point and I understood what you were saying, I was saying a strat with 'normal' BA usage would only be made better with more BA usage.

But your latest attempt at self pity is cute :)

Very nearly as cute as you pointing out...well, what exactly were you trying to point out again?

My latest attempt was not self-pity (at least that wasn't what I was going for...surely you have seen me do a better job of that if I really meant to... *smile*).

The attempt was lamenting the fact that I was unable to make a very simple point without you feeling the need to state something trite and tell me my point did not make sense. Especially when I was merely trying to state something complimentary.

Get a room you two.

I just have one question. Does this count as a change in the game mechanics or is this a change that you would be allowed to make during a non-change month? Will it be implemented soon or will we simply have to wait until November?

I'd assume it'll take at least that long for them to get solid code in place, but then again, it could be easier than I imagine and they could be amazing coders. ;)

Remember, tournaments existed before. I would assume the code doesn't need to be _completely_ re-written?

depends on how different these tournies are, Sut :P

You guys are gonna be worse than my boss.

"Is the code done yet?" "Did you do a code review?" "Did you update the design docs?"

No way [EG] Almuric, we will inspire you and make you want to get it done as fast as possible :)

...is it finished yet BTW??

-I'm sure you'll do a good job! Keep it up!

*insert motivational comments here*

could just be me but it looks like wuss has a bit of a problem with admitting hes wrong...

Almuric, don't forget the standard response from end-users once you deliver the product: "Oh we've changed our minds - can you change this and this and this... Yeah, it'll be a complete re-design, you can have it tomorrow, right?"

Jonathan does have one weapon in his bag of tricks to make tournies attractive to the top 15 .... he could offer 1 month of NUB as the top prize (we could always call it the TUB ... Tourney User's Bonus). :-)

Two months later...

"Brilliant strategy player! You must be so good at this that you don't even need a TUB to succeed... So here's your TUB."

Yeah or Jon could just make my strat better, or double my total xp and NW, or just fix the game so it ignores the stats and hands my team the match automatically. He has so many more cards then just one.

Sutekh, I was trying to buy Al some time. ;)

Or I could just shut down non-tournament play for a week :)

Oh, how wickedly wonderful. =) That would actually be pretty nifty from time to time.

Very fancy!

That's a good one Jon. A week break from CB is like a long vacation away from work. :)

That would indeed be welcome once in a while.

WooT!

In addition to 'Change Months', there could be established Tourny weeks!


Or some such! ;)

maybe the prize for the new tourneys could be a rare item that doesn't spawn in auctions and you can't pay USD for (aside from trading players that won the tourney.)

Xentrik, that sounds like a carp ;)

I see a couple of problems if regular play is cut-off for a week for tournies. If you can't play any char but those for the tourny some people may just not play for a week. While this doesn't sound like a problem what would happen if say during that week they are gone all their ammo is spent and then they become the target of tourny chars. I know that Jon has fixed it so that you don't lose money and exp by being beat by lower pr chars, like the abuse on cb1where people would come back after a month off and have negative money, but I could see this leading to different types of abuse. The main problem I see in doing this is keeping new players. If you heard about this great game and decided to try it only to learn that the char you made would be retired at the end of the week would you continue to play. While this may be a great way for new players to learn the game, a week long tutorial so to speak, those who have no idea what is happening will give up and I forsee a huge drop in keeping new players during this time. For those who use chat, I mean actually use it, or listen to their mentors this wouldn't be a problem but for those who don't use chat or can't when they log in and see their char retired then more and likely they would just leave without trying to find out what is happening. Also what would happen to the new players NUB? That would be a week or more depending on how many tournament are played that they would lose of it. Though I'm sure this would make some people very happy.

Losing arrows during this period is not an issue. If you lose arrows then you surely gained xp and cash. They are linked. Besides, just because it was set up in CB1 that tournament characters could fight regular characters, doesn't mean that it's going to be that way here.

The reason for allowing tourney characters to fight the regulars was, I believe, because otherwise there would be a lack of opponents to fight. If all regular characters were unusable then I'm sure things would be different.

New players would be lucky to land on a tourney week and I'm sure we can add a number of headings that link to the wiki that can describe to the new player that there is such a thing as tourney week, that they are indeed working on a tourney character, that the tourney will indeed end on a specific day at a specific time, and that once it is over they can go back to working on their normal main character..

As for the NUB players, I can only imagine the pages upon pages of code and the days spent debugging, rewriting, re-debugging it would involve to extend the player's bonus by a week... No wait, I can't!

I would like that tourney char have a fix 10BA per 10 min so main char wont need to be retire.

I'll throw my $0.02 in on the subject by suggesting giving a player their WHOLE supply of BA for the tournament character at once, so they can use it whenever they want. The BA would only be useable by the tournament character. Your regular character would get something like 10BA/cycle or whatever for maintenance purposes until the tourney BA is used up or you retire from the tournament.

Victim: wouldn't that make everybody sign up for the tournament at the last possible time and just burn they BA without really thinking?

It sure would be a great exploit to still be able to burn your normal BA on 3/4 of the week and signup for the tourney and be able to burn the special BA that is available all at once