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Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 2:39 pm
by Psychout
Welcome to the new Tournament planning/evaluation forum.

Over the years there have been a crapload of suggestions for tourneys, competitions and mini-games in HMW; Alt-hunts, Scavenger hunts, pick your poisons, elimination tournaments, warmap battles and story challenges are just a few. Some have been awesome, some havent worked and others never made it off the drawing board.

Some people are good with ideas and suggestions whilst some are better at organising and scoring. Here is the chance for you guys to get your heads together and come up with ideas, schemes and projects that will add a new dimension to HMW and make the game better for those who want something to enjoy.

We've created this place with these guidlines in mind.

1) Brainstorming ideas for new tournaments and how to implement them.
2) Organizing the promotion and execution of those tournaments.
3) Drafting tournament material
4) Tracking tournament data (wins/losses/kills, etc.)
5) Evaluating the shortcomings of past tournaments and troubleshooting the problems they evidenced.

If you have a suggestion for a tournament, an idea for a game or someting to bring a more friendly competiton to HMW:GD, or even just a comment on how the previous games have gone this is the place for you.

But just so you are know, this forum will be heavily moderated and non-topic posts will get shifted to GD without warning. Please keep it on topic, and everyone be sure thank AZ who's suggestion allowed this place to happen...

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 3:23 pm
by Chaoslock
I miss the old Scavenger-hunts, they were awesome.

Also, I think of "worlds collide" tournaments (Star Wars or Star Trek battles?) BTW, anybody knows if maximals have SW alts? I know bots have the Falcon, X-Wing, and the Medical Frigatte, we have the TIE In, the Hailfire, the LAAT/i, and the AT-AT and the preds have the TIE Defender and the TIE fighter. Anymore I missed?

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 5:06 pm
by Dr. Caelus
Krsi and I enjoyed the partnered scavenger hunt we played in quite a lot.


Chaoslock wrote:Also, I think of "worlds collide" tournaments (Star Wars or Star Trek battles?) BTW, anybody knows if maximals have SW alts?


Maximals have the A-Wing and the Y-Wing at least, they may have more.

Edit:

A couple of things the staff discussed but never came to fruition:

Zombie Apocalypse - Based on the Hate Plague or Angolmois Plague. I pitched an idea for this as an "official" tournament-like event (post lost to the hurricane), but the current game structure wasn't flexible enough for the necessary automation that would track who was and wasn't infected. I've never figured out a practical way to do that manually, but that doesn't mean someone else won't.

HMW: Shattered Glass - Not too much detail. Mkall had a wild and crazy idea, but it never happened. Might be a fun premise for some of the tournament writers to play with though. Might make for a fun special-edition of Burn's newsletter.


And an additional idea from me: Battle for the Allspark. One player starts with the Allspark. It passes to the first participating player that KOs them. They then lose it to the next player that KOs them. Bot in possession of Allspark must participate in 5 missions per 24hrs or it is automatically 'recovered' by the previous owner. The faction who holds the Allspark at the end of the Tournament wins.

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:25 pm
by Loki God Of Mischief
The only way Shattered Glass would work as a tournament is if the everyone was switched to the opposite faction. IE your natural enemy, for example I'm a Predacon so my faction symbol would turn into a green Predacon symbol. For added cool you could temporarily give the participates custom bios from someone who was skilled enough at writing to make a Shattered Glass version of the normal character.

For example Shattered Glass Waspinator (owned by Caelus) would be a talented tactician and brilliant pilot. As one of the most respected warriors in the Predacon army he's been promoted to the head of a team of heroic Predacons once mistaken for creatures of Earthen myth that he had rescued in Earths prehistory. Together he and this commando unit fight to liberate Prehistoric Earth from the nefarious schemes of Leo Convoy's mercenary squad while his former commander Megatron races to Cybertron in pursuit of the evil Optimus Primal and his crew of Maximal terrorists.

I hope I didn't go off on too much of a tangent there.

And the battle for the Allspark sounds fun, but it'd be way more awesome if you changed it around a bit. Make it the Hate Plague! You designate one team Patient Zero and anyone they KO becomes infected. But if you're not stasis locked in a mission by a plague carrier you avoided infection. Perhaps via Matrix energy or synthetic Matrix Energy. Can anyone light our darkest hour? Or will the Transformers descend into madness?

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 8:59 pm
by Tammuz
yeah we came up with Scalp tag which works similiar to your allspark game with the target being the guy who just killed the old target, and the winner being the one who killed the most targets.

REALLY hard to keep track of.


i also had the idea that your hate plague/cosmic rust game could have the addition that an over repair on a diseased character removes the disease,

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Sun Nov 09, 2008 9:21 pm
by Hoistimus
Tammuz wrote:i also had the idea that your hate plague/cosmic rust game could have the addition that an over repair on a diseased character removes the disease,


Which would work if anyone uses repair.. since we're all at such low level, it's not a skill seen used on a regular basis, with a chance at over-repairing even more scarce. Maybe just having a TF stasis-locked removes the plague since it has to do a full CR cycle.. still, it would be a logistical nightmare following who is infected..

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 12:26 am
by Dr. Caelus
Well, if we were going to keep to the true essence of Zombie horror, the sadistic sense of futility, then there shouldn't be any cure to the epidemic. Infected bots would just keep spreading the infection through Ram, Repair, and melee attacks.

Winners would be those remaining uninfected after one week who could prove that they'd played X missions/day.

If we could play with the game's programming (assignment of factions, CR entry, etc.) we could do some really interesting stuff, but for now, that is not an option.

Even keeping it simple it's still horrendously complicated.



Additionally, my wife says "I want a scavenger hunt."

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 5:31 am
by Burn
Something important to retain in all of this is the calendar of events for the simple fact we don't end up with multiple tournaments/competitions running at the same time.

I mean it's not too much trouble for people to wait for anything running to finish before starting their own.

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 5:40 am
by Tammuz
aye Burn, Aye!

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 6:12 am
by Psychout
Thats a very good point.

If I put a sticky up that's locked so only the staff can update it and we try and use it for all tournaments once they are 'booked-in', will that help?

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 6:14 am
by Burn
It will, provided people read it. Of course we could just hope for common courtesy to prevail.

Once the Bulletins get back online it'll be good to "advertise" in advance as well.

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 6:21 am
by Tammuz
on a similiar (and very off topic note) can we get a locked "known bugs thread so that any undealt with bugs are not hidden in the bug reporting thread?

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Mon Nov 10, 2008 6:46 am
by Psychout
Burn wrote:It will, provided people read it. Of course we could just hope for common courtesy to prevail.

Once the Bulletins get back online it'll be good to "advertise" in advance as well.
Im reluctant to arbitrarily state that 'non-listed tournaments' will be superceeded by 'official' ones, but once the list is up, id assume that anything booked in would take priority over ones created on the fly.

We'd could also be sure there was enough time between tourneys for xp recovery and for people to take a short break from the the game if they have lives etc. to pursue.

But as long as we can channel all tourney discussion into here, then a calendar thread should do the job. pRed's original calendar thread was a very good idea and only fell off in the reset chaos.


Tammuz: if you're willing to make up a list, ill do the sticky/locking part for you in GD, no worries.

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 3:05 am
by Jeep?
Merc With A Mouth wrote:For added cool you could temporarily give the participates custom bios from someone who was skilled enough at writing to make a Shattered Glass version of the normal character.


...I'll put the coffee on, I'm not getting to bed on this one. Why'd you go put this idea in my head?

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 2:23 pm
by Grimpoo
Jeep! wrote:
Merc With A Mouth wrote:For added cool you could temporarily give the participates custom bios from someone who was skilled enough at writing to make a Shattered Glass version of the normal character.


...I'll put the coffee on, I'm not getting to bed on this one. Why'd you go put this idea in my head?


Crap that means i would have to write a story about Good POO and not Evil POO...life isn't fair!

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 9:51 pm
by Wingspan
Grimpoo wrote:
Jeep! wrote:
Merc With A Mouth wrote:For added cool you could temporarily give the participates custom bios from someone who was skilled enough at writing to make a Shattered Glass version of the normal character.


...I'll put the coffee on, I'm not getting to bed on this one. Why'd you go put this idea in my head?


Crap that means i would have to write a story about Good POO and not Evil POO...life isn't fair!

Good POO, Image, Evil POO Image?

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Thu Nov 13, 2008 10:22 pm
by Grimpoo
You make me wanna change my name to PUU 8)

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 6:46 am
by Burn
I just noticed Mogwai Prime's name as a Mod on this forum.

Where is the damn furball anyway? :P

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 12:27 pm
by Redimus
Psychout wrote:Thats a very good point.

If I put a sticky up that's locked so only the staff can update it and we try and use it for all tournaments once they are 'booked-in', will that help?


As long as it's in the HMW GD (and maybe cloned in the faction forums). It'd be less than usless in here, as most people will already know about em long before thye become offcial.

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Fri Nov 14, 2008 7:52 pm
by Loki God Of Mischief
Burn wrote:I just noticed Mogwai Prime's name as a Mod on this forum.

Where is the damn furball anyway? :P


Hopefully nowhere near water.

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Tue Nov 18, 2008 3:53 am
by Psychout
I've split AZ's ideas off, but I've added them to here.

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 3:15 pm
by Absolute Zero
Someone had previously asked about schedualling...

My thought on this is we should have a event once a month. But never the samething on consecutive months. There are currently three major ones that I'm aware of. Scalp Hunt, Scavenger Hunt, and Tournies.

If we spread them out, then people wont get tired of them, but if we run something once a month, there's always a event coming to get built up for.

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 3:29 pm
by Tammuz
i think once a month might be too often especially as some tournies have run multiple weeks.

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Wed Nov 19, 2008 3:55 pm
by Absolute Zero
Tammuz wrote:i think once a month might be too often especially as some tournies have run multiple weeks.


True... Didn't think of that... 4ish weeks between them minumum then? Maybe try to keep it a little random with a roughly a month in between, rather then starting at a predictible exact space between the two.

Re: Brainstorming for future tournaments

PostPosted: Thu Nov 20, 2008 1:15 am
by Redimus
Absolute Zero wrote:
Tammuz wrote:i think once a month might be too often especially as some tournies have run multiple weeks.


True... Didn't think of that... 4ish weeks between them minumum then? Maybe try to keep it a little random with a roughly a month in between, rather then starting at a predictible exact space between the two.


[color=red]There is no point settign any form of schedualed calender for gaes and tournies. Nor is there anypoint settign rules for times between them.

the reasons:

1: 99% of the people who run these are not only volenteers, but arnt even staff on these forums. It is not fair to impose on them to run things.

2: The timings of games/tournies is often reliant on when the runner happens ot have the idea, or happens to have tiem to run it (I for one run most of my things when Im on holiday). It is unfair for them to have to wait an amount of time just cuase someone else ran one recently when they can only really run it when they can run it.

All we need is the return of the tournie/game calender thread, so people can make sure they dont overlap eachother, and we'll be fine.